Glassnode's Q4 report: what NUPL and dormant supply show

Glassnode published the Q4 2026 edition of Charting Crypto, its quarterly study with Coinbase Institutional, on 2026-10-15. The report leans on a handful of on-chain gauges to describe how bitcoin holders behaved in the third quarter. This article looks at three of them, how each is built, and what each cannot tell you.

What the quarterly study says

According to Glassnode, bitcoin moved from a bottoming phase into an early recovery during the third quarter. That happened while the Fed went back to tightening and long-dated Treasury yields rose. The authors call their outlook for the quarter constructive, but they also say there are grounds for caution in the near term.

The study has three parts: macro conditions and fund flows, bitcoin on-chain and derivatives data, and Ethereum market and network activity. Its charts use data up to the end of September, so this is a snapshot of a finished quarter.

Three on-chain findings carry most of the bitcoin story. Sentiment, measured by NUPL, has recovered without looking stretched. Long-held coins kept piling up. And a new heatmap shows where large amounts of supply last changed hands.

The metrics: how each gauge is built

NUPL, short for net unrealized profit/loss, tracks the paper gain or loss carried across all bitcoin supply. The idea is simple. Every coin on the chain last moved at some price. Compare that price with today's price and you get a paper profit or a paper loss for that coin. Add it all up and scale it against the network's size, and you get one number for the whole market. Glassnode labels ranges of that number with mood names. In the quarter, NUPL moved back into the Optimism/Anxiety band, and the report says it stays well short of the Belief/Denial threshold. Glassnode reads that as sentiment recovering without being stretched.

Dormant supply counts coins that have not moved for a set period. Here the cut-off is more than a year. Glassnode found that this pool kept growing during the rally. The report reads that as long-term holders mostly staying put. At the same time, recently moved coins came back into circulation as newer participants returned. Both readings come from the same raw input: the age of each coin since its last transfer.

The support and resistance heatmap is new in this edition. It maps the prices at which coins last changed hands. Thick bands mean many coins share a similar cost basis, which is the price their current holder is assumed to have paid. According to the report, the map marks the price area where the September highs stalled. It also shows a heavier band of cost-basis supply sitting just above that area, and several overlapping layers below the spot price.

Limits: where these readings can mislead

Each of these gauges rests on assumptions about what a coin movement means. Those assumptions are often reasonable, but they are not facts about people.

• A coin's last move is not always a purchase. Transfers between a holder's own wallets, exchange reshuffles and custody changes reset a coin's age and its recorded price, even though nobody bought or sold.
• Dormant coins are not all held by patient investors. Some belong to lost wallets, some sit with custodians, and some sit in exchange cold storage. The chain cannot tell these apart on its own.
• Mood bands such as Optimism/Anxiety are labels chosen by analysts. They describe a range of a number, not what holders actually feel or plan to do.
• A strong link between a series and next-month returns is a statistical pattern in past data. It can weaken or vanish, and it does not explain cause.

Glassnode itself flags this. Its disclaimer says the report is for information and education only, and it disclaims responsibility for discrepancies or possible inaccuracies in the data. In its own words: "We urge users to exercise caution and discretion when utilizing these metrics."

How to read the heatmap without over-reading it

Cost-basis maps are tempting because they look like a price chart with walls on it. The useful way to read one is as a census, not a forecast. A thick band says many coins last moved near that price. It says nothing certain about whether their holders will act when the price returns there.

It also helps to remember what is missing. Exchange coins are often pooled, so one on-chain movement can stand for many customers. Trades inside an exchange or in derivatives never show up in these maps.

What to watch next

The report's other sections give context worth checking alongside the on-chain gauges. They cover fund flows into spot ETFs, stablecoin liquidity, how bitcoin tracks gold, stocks, the dollar and Treasury yields, plus valuation, miner revenue and derivatives positioning. The Ethereum part looks at sentiment, ether supply, ETF flows and activity on DeFi and layer-2 networks.

For a reader, the practical next step is to watch how these gauges move together. If dormant supply starts to shrink while NUPL rises, older coins are moving. Whether that means selling or wallet housekeeping is a separate question the chain alone cannot settle. The full report is free to download as a PDF from Glassnode.

Sources

• Glassnode, 15 Oct 2026

Drafted by AI from the research and on-chain sources listed, then published automatically once checks confirmed the figures against those sources and found no copied text. Not reviewed by a person. Metrics are explained, never turned into price calls.