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Short-Term Holder Cost Basis: Reading Glassnode's Note
Glassnode's Running on Empty note leans on short-term holder cost basis, stablecoin supply and cohort scores. What each measures, and where it can mislead.
Glassnode published a weekly research note called Running on Empty on November 11, 2026, and Decrypt reported on it the same day. The note argues that money is leaving the Bitcoin market, and it builds that case from a handful of on-chain and market indicators. This article looks at three of them: the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis, total stablecoin supply and the Accumulation Trend Score, and asks what each one really measures.
What the note shows
By Glassnode's estimate, recent buyers paid $75.6K on average, a figure it calls the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis, while Bitcoin traded around $74K, under that line. In plain terms, the group of people who bought in the past few months is, on average, holding at a loss.
Glassnode adds two supporting signals. Total stablecoin supply fell by $14.2B over 30 days, the fastest drop since June 2022. Decrypt said that window ended Nov. 9 and that supply now sits just below $280 billion. Glassnode also points to $1.6B in net outflows from US spot Bitcoin ETFs over 20 sessions, and to a Coinbase Premium whose 30-day average discount is the deepest since February.
On the other side, Glassnode notes that two large wallet cohorts have started adding to their balances.
What is on-chain analysis telling us here?
On-chain analysis means reading the public ledger: which coins moved, when, and between which addresses. Glassnode uses that record to estimate what groups of holders paid and whether they are buying or selling. Those figures are models, and models carry assumptions.
The metrics: how each one is built
Short-Term Holder Cost Basis. Glassnode describes it as "the average price paid by investors who bought within the past 155 days". The chain records the price environment when each coin last moved. Average that across coins younger than 155 days and you get one number for the recent-buyer group. At the September high, almost every coin in this group showed a gain. Glassnode now puts that share at about 35%.
Cost Basis Distribution. Instead of one average, this spreads the same coins across price levels. Glassnode says about two thirds of short-term coins were acquired above the current price. Those coins fall into three price bands, bought over roughly three months, the top one reaching $83.6K. Under the current price there is just one thick cluster, from $62K to $66K. Glassnode suggests holders above price may sell at breakeven. If price regained its True Market Mean of $77.5K, Glassnode says, roughly half of recent-buyer coins would be in the green again.
Stablecoin supply. This counts the dollar tokens in existence. Glassnode reads a falling total as people cashing tokens back into dollars, which removes that money from crypto. A return to growth over 30 days would be, in its words, the first sign of new money.
Accumulation Trend Score. Wallets are grouped by size. Each group gets a score near 1 if it is adding to its balance and near 0 if it is reducing it, weighted by wallet size. Over the past week, wallets holding 100 to 1K BTC and 1K to 10K BTC scored above 0.5, after spending much of October distributing.
Limits: where these numbers can mislead
Each metric squeezes a messy reality into one figure.
- An address is not a person. Cohort scores and cost basis depend on labelling and clustering addresses. Glassnode itself warns that its exchange balances rely on that process and may miss reserves when exchanges do not publish their addresses.
- Averages hide spread. A cost basis of $75.6K says nothing about how many coins sit far above or below it, which is why the distribution view exists. The 155-day cut-off is also a modelling choice, not a natural boundary.
- Signals can fade. Glassnode notes that the same two large cohorts also turned buyers in late September, and that move did not last. Every other cohort, from wallets above 10K BTC to those below 1 BTC, is still reducing holdings.
- Timing is uneven. Cost basis, cohort scores, ETF and stablecoin figures stop at November 9, while price and derivatives data run to November 11, 11:00 UTC. A chart mixing them compares different moments.
Stablecoin supply has its own catch. A shrinking total shows redemptions, but it cannot say who redeemed or why. Coins moving onto exchanges are similar: Decrypt cited a separate CryptoQuant report that more than $3.6 billion worth of BTC moved onto exchanges lately, possibly for sale at a loss. A deposit shows intent to use an exchange, not a completed sale.
What to watch next
The useful questions are about direction, not levels. Does the share of short-term holder coins in profit keep shrinking or start to recover? Does the 30-day change in stablecoin supply turn back to growth, which Glassnode treats as its first sign of new money? Do smaller wallet cohorts join the two large ones, or do those two drift back toward distributing, as they did after late September?
On ETFs, Glassnode counts any run past $1.5B of net outflows as an outflow stretch and says that, historically, inflows came back only after the low. None of these readings tells you where the price goes next. This is education, not advice: crypto prices can fall and you can lose money.
Sources
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.