What Is MVRV? Reading Glassnode's Week 46 Holder Data

Glassnode's BTC Market Pulse for Week 46, published on 2026-11-09, shows the paper profit of US spot ETF holders shrinking while on-chain activity runs hot and spent coins lock in losses. According to Glassnode, bitcoin closed Sunday at its weakest level since August. This article looks less at the price and more at the tools: what MVRV, active addresses and realized profit-to-loss actually count, and where each reading can lead a reader astray.

What the Week 46 note shows

Glassnode grades every indicator against its own high and low bands, a range built from that metric's recent history. A reading above the high band is unusual on the upside; one below the low band is unusual on the downside. That framing matters, because it means the note describes how odd a reading is, not whether it is good or bad.

Three groups of readings stand out. Holder profit is thin: MVRV for US spot ETF holders slipped 1.4% to 1.30 from 1.32 and stayed under its low band, apart from a brief lift during the Wednesday bounce. Activity is busy: daily active addresses rose 1.8% to 670.6K and held above the high band all week. And loss-taking is heavy: the realized profit to loss ratio sank to -0.63 from -0.21.

What is MVRV, and what does 1.30 mean here?

MVRV stands for market value to realized value. Market value prices every coin at today's price. Realized value prices each coin at the price it last moved on-chain, which works as a rough cost basis. Dividing one by the other tells you how far the current price sits above or below what holders paid on average.

Glassnode applies the same idea to a narrower group: the coins held by US spot ETFs, valued against the price at which those funds took them in. At 1.30, the typical ETF holder is still in profit, but Glassnode said that cushion is now the smallest since August. In its words, "A shrinking cushion makes these investors more sensitive to further declines, consistent with the steady outflows from the funds." That is a description of sensitivity, not a forecast of what holders will do.

How the activity and loss metrics are built

Daily active addresses counts unique addresses that send or receive in a day. Entity-adjusted transfer volume tries to go a step further: it groups addresses believed to belong to the same owner and counts only value moving between separate entities. That figure edged up 0.7% to $5.7B, above its high band. Total fee volume climbed 12.5% to $228.2K, which Glassnode linked to the sell-off rather than wider network use, with no sign of congestion.

The profit and loss metrics compare the price a coin last moved at with the price when it moves again. When the realized profit to loss ratio is negative, spent coins are booking more losses than gains. Glassnode called the current loss-taking fear-driven, while noting the ratio had not reached its low band. Share of supply in profit fell 3.8% to 60.6%, which Glassnode described as cooling, not capitulation.

Limits: where these readings can mislead

Every metric above rests on choices made by the data provider. Before treating any of them as a verdict, keep these blind spots in mind.

• Addresses are not people. One user can control many addresses, and one exchange address can serve thousands of users, so 670.6K active addresses is an activity count, not a head count.
• Entity grouping is an estimate. Glassnode itself cautions that its exchange figures depend on address labels and clustering, and may miss reserves when exchanges do not publish their addresses. Any entity-adjusted number inherits that uncertainty.
• Realized value only updates when a coin moves. Coins bought off-chain, or traded inside an exchange or fund without an on-chain transfer, keep an old cost basis, so MVRV can drift from what holders really paid.
• Bands are relative. A reading above its high band is only unusual compared with the metric's own recent past; it says nothing about long history or about what comes next.

Glassnode's busy activity readings are a good example. The firm read them as holders repositioning during the swings. That is a reasonable reading, but the same address and volume data could also reflect internal reshuffling by large custodians, which on-chain data cannot always tell apart.

What to watch next

Two cohorts carry most of the signal in this note. Newer holders are gaining weight: the STH to LTH supply ratio rose 2.6% to 15.1%, and hot capital share, coins bought in the past three months, reached 21.9%. Net unrealized profit to loss for short-term holders fell 67.1% to 1.1%, and by Sunday that group sat on a small aggregate paper loss.

Watch whether ETF holder MVRV moves back inside its band, whether the realized profit to loss ratio reaches its low band or recovers, and whether monthly realized cap change, which dropped 44.4% to 0.49%, keeps slowing. Each tells you something about cost basis and behaviour. None of them, on its own, tells you where the price goes. Bitcoin and the funds that hold it carry real risk, and anyone who holds them can lose money. Glassnode's own report states that it is for information and education only and is not investment advice.

Sources

• Glassnode, 9 Nov 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.