Glassnode's Week 42 pulse: what each bitcoin metric measures

Glassnode's BTC Market Pulse for Week 42, published on 2026-10-12, describes a week in which bitcoin slipped below $81k on Thursday and closed about 3% lower, before trading just under $83k on Monday. The report blames derivatives traders and ETF holders for most of the selling, while on-chain signs of new money held up. This article walks through the metrics behind that reading, what each one actually counts, and where the numbers can mislead.

What the report says happened

Glassnode's summary is short. In its words, "perpetual traders and ETF holders drove the pullback, while new capital kept arriving on-chain and most holders still sit on gains". The rest of the report is the evidence for that sentence, split into off-chain data from exchanges and funds, and on-chain data from the Bitcoin ledger itself.

The selling showed up most clearly in derivatives. Perpetual CVD dropped from $49.5M to -$681.8M, well under its low band. Long-side funding payments fell 25.8%, from $1.3M to $945.0K. Weekly US spot ETF netflow swung from $117.9M of inflows to -$701.6M of outflows. Spot markets were calmer: spot CVD turned from $11.1M to -$90.7M but stayed inside its normal bands, and spot volume eased from $5.7B to $5.4B.

On the chain, the picture was mixed rather than weak. Daily active addresses fell 5.9%, to 631.2K from 670.9K, and total fee volume shrank 15.0%, to $221.6K. Yet monthly realized cap change edged up from 1.1% to 1.2%, and hot capital share rose from 19.6% to 20.3%, both above their high bands.

How Glassnode frames each number

Every indicator in the report is judged against a statistical range with a low band and a high band. A reading inside the range is treated as normal for recent history. A reading outside it is flagged as unusual. This matters for beginners: a large percentage move can still be ordinary, while a small move can cross a band.

Options skew is a good example. The 25-delta skew rose from 2.1% to 4.46%, an increase of 112.4%, yet Glassnode says it still sat within its range. Skew compares the price of downside protection with upside bets, so a rise points to more demand for hedges, but not an extreme one by the report's own yardstick.

The metrics, in plain terms

Several of these names are jargon. Here is what each one counts.

• CVD (cumulative volume delta): a running tally of aggressive taker buying minus aggressive taker selling. A taker is a trader who hits an existing order rather than waiting. A negative number means sellers were the more impatient side.
• Funding payments: perpetual futures have no expiry, so longs and shorts pay each other a periodic fee to keep the contract near spot. Lower payments by longs suggest less appetite for leveraged upside.
• Open interest: the value of futures contracts still open. It stayed flat at $36.7B, near the top of its range, which Glassnode reads as leverage remaining in the system.
• Realized cap and hot capital share: realized cap values each coin at the price it last moved on-chain. Hot capital share tracks how much of that value sits in recently moved coins, a rough proxy for newer money.
• Supply in profit and realized profit to loss: the first estimates how many coins last moved below today's price; it slipped from 74.5% to 71.4%. The second compares profits and losses actually locked in when coins move; it fell from 1.5 to 1.0, a 34.4% drop, though still above its high band.

Limits: where these readings can mislead

Weekly dashboards like this one are useful summaries, but each metric rests on assumptions.

• Bands describe recent history, not fair value. A reading above the high band only says it is unusual compared with the recent past.
• On-chain activity is not the same as people. Active addresses count addresses, and one person or exchange can control many of them.
• Labels are estimates. Glassnode itself notes that exchange balance figures rely on address labels and clustering and may miss reserves when exchanges do not publish their addresses.
• Derivatives and ETF data cover only the venues being tracked, and one week of flows can reverse quickly.

None of these figures says where price goes next. Crypto prices swing sharply, leverage magnifies those swings, and anyone trading bitcoin or its derivatives can lose money. Glassnode's report carries a disclaimer that it is for information and education only and is not investment advice.

What to watch in the next reports

The useful question is whether the split described here persists. One thread is leverage: open interest stayed high while funding fell, so watch whether those two keep diverging or move back together. Another is the ETF line: whether the outflow below the low band is a one-week event or the start of a pattern.

On the chain, watch whether realized cap change and hot capital share stay above their high bands, and whether transfer volume, which held at $5.9B on an entity-adjusted basis, stays elevated while active addresses and fees cool. Reading these together, rather than one at a time, gives a fuller view of who is moving coins and why.

Sources

• Glassnode, 12 Oct 2026

Written with AI assistance from the reports listed above and checked automatically and by an editor pass before publishing: every figure must appear in the source reports, no sentence is copied, and the article gives no buy or sell advice. Educational content only.