Metrics library

HODL waves: reading Bitcoin’s supply by coin age

HODL waves stack Bitcoin’s supply into coloured bands by how long ago each coin last moved. The bands swell and shrink as holders sit still or spend, and the result looks like waves.

By TokenTrail Editorial6 min read · 9 sources
Waves rolling in and breaking on a beach

Photo: “Pacific Ocean Waves” by sonstroem, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr (edited: cropped and resized).

Quick answer

HODL waves show what share of the coin supply sits in each age band, where age is the time since a coin last moved on-chain [1]. Dhruv Bansal of Unchained Capital named the pattern in April 2018 [2]. Growing old bands suggest holding; growing young bands suggest old coins moving.

Key points

  • 1A coin’s age is the time since it was last used in a transaction, not since it was mined.
  • 2Each band’s thickness is its share of total supply, so all bands add up to 100%.
  • 3Spending old coins moves them instantly into the youngest band; ageing into older bands takes time.
  • 4A move is not a sale: forks, address upgrades and exchange housekeeping also make old coins young.

What do HODL waves show?#

“HODL” is crypto slang for holding coins for the long term. Every bitcoin sits inside a UTXO, an unspent output that can later be spent in a new transaction [3]. Each UTXO was created at a known time, so every bitcoin has an age — not when it was mined, but when it was last used in a transaction [2].

HODL waves group the supply into age bands and draw each band as a coloured layer whose thickness is its share of total supply [1]. Because the chart is normalised, the layers always add up to 100% [4]. Warm colours usually mark recently moved coins and cool colours mark coins that have not moved for a long time [2].

How are HODL waves calculated?#

Band share = coins whose age (today − date last moved) falls in the band ÷ total supply

Glassnode measures each band as the amount of supply last moved within that time window, then stacks the bands in proportion to total supply [1].

Providers choose their own bands. Look Into Bitcoin, for example, uses twelve: under 24 hours, 1 day to 1 week, 1 week to 1 month, 1–3 months, 3–6 months, 6–12 months, 1–2 years, 2–3 years, 3–5 years, 5–7 years, 7–10 years and over 10 years [4].

StepValue
Under 1 month: 120 → 220 coins12% → 22%
2–5 years: 200 → 100 coins20% → 10%
All other bandsUnchanged
Share younger than 6 months30% → 40%
Share older than 1 year55% → 45%

One move changed two bands immediately. The reverse never happens instantly: those 100 coins will only re-enter the 1–2 year band if they sit still for a full year.

The three broad coin groups in a HODL waves chart

The three broad coin groups in a HODL waves chart: Young coins (under 6 months): Most day-to-day volume; traders and recent buyers; re-spent often; Old coins (1 to 5 years): Often assumed to be long-term holders; thickens after accumulation, thins when spent; Ancient or lost coins (over 5 years): Rarely spent; many presumed lost; tends to grow steadily over timeThe three broad coin groups in a HODL waves chart: Young coins (under 6 months): Most day-to-day volume; traders and recent buyers; re-spent often; Old coins (1 to 5 years): Often assumed to be long-term holders; thickens after accumulation, thins when spent; Ancient or lost coins (over 5 years): Rarely spent; many presumed lost; tends to grow steadily over time
Groupings as described in Glassnode’s HODL waves guide. [1]

How do analysts read HODL waves?#

Common readings of band changes
What you seeWhat it means on-chainHow it is often interpreted
Young bands swellMany older coins moved recentlyLong-term holders spending into rallies
Old bands swellCoins moved a year or more ago have stayed putAccumulation and holding
Over-5-year bands creep upVery old coins keep ageingPartly lost coins that will never move
Young bands shrinkRecently moved coins are maturingNew buyers holding rather than flipping

Glassnode links swelling young bands to old coins being spent and returned to liquid circulation, and growing old bands to holders accumulating with long-term conviction [1]. Look Into Bitcoin notes that young bands have tended to spike as price climbs fast towards cycle tops [4]. These are interpretations of a handful of past cycles; the chart itself only records when coins last moved.

What did past HODL waves look like?#

  1. 2013-12Right after the rally past $1k, more than 60% of bitcoin had moved within the previous 12 months [2].
  2. 2017-02As price crossed $1k again, almost 60% of bitcoin was older than 12 months [2].
  3. 2017-0825% of bitcoin became less than one month old, largely because holders claimed coins after the Bitcoin Cash fork and moved to SegWit addresses [2].
  4. Early 2018About a year after February 2017, just after the $19k peak, only 40% of bitcoin was older than 12 months [2].

The August 2017 entry is the most useful lesson for beginners. A large slice of supply turned “young” not because it was sold, but because a fork and an address upgrade gave holders technical reasons to move coins [2].

What is the realized cap version?#

Realized Cap HODL waves weight each band by the dollar value of its coins at their last-move price, as a share of realized cap, instead of by coin count [5]. Glassnode credits this variant to an analyst known as typerbole and says it downplays very old, cheaply acquired coins and reacts faster than the original [5]. In our example, with hypothetical last-move prices of $30, $28, $20, $12, $6 and $1 from the youngest band to the oldest, realized cap comes to $15,390 — and the oldest band, 15% of all coins, carries only about 1% of realized value.

Glassnode’s guide also describes past accumulation bottoms as times when coins older than six months held 60% or more of realized cap [5] — again, an observation about earlier cycles rather than a rule. Coin Metrics publishes a related dataset: Bitcoin’s realized cap split into thirteen age bands that sum to the total [6].

Where do HODL waves mislead?#

  • A move is not a sale. Forks and address upgrades [2], exchange cold-wallet reshuffles and change outputs [7] all reset coin age.
  • Lost coins inflate the old bands. Glassnode notes that many coins older than five years are assumed lost and that these bands tend to keep growing [1].
  • Shares, not amounts. Bands are percentages of a growing supply, so a band can shrink in share while holding the same number of coins.
  • Coin age is not holder age. Glassnode’s 155-day line between short- and long-term holders is a statistical choice about coins, not a fact about people [8].

HODL waves in one box

Measures
Share of supply in each coin-age band [1]
Coin age means
Time since last used in a transaction [2]
Coined by
Dhruv Bansal, Unchained Capital, April 2018 [1]
Bands on Look Into Bitcoin
12, from under 24 hours to over 10 years [4]
Coins treated as young (Glassnode)
Under 6 months [1]

What mistakes do beginners make here?#

  • Reading every spike in young coins as selling

    Forks, address upgrades and exchange housekeeping also make old coins young. August 2017 is the classic example.

  • Forgetting the maturation delay

    Coins need a full year before they can appear in the 1–2 year band. Old bands always react late.

  • Treating old bands as active holders

    A share of the oldest coins is probably lost forever and will never be sold.

  • Comparing band names across providers

    Each provider picks its own age bands and colours. Check the legend before comparing two charts.

Frequently asked questions#

What does HODL mean?

It is crypto slang for holding coins long term rather than trading them. The chart is named after the habit it tries to make visible.

Who created HODL waves?

Glassnode credits Dhruv Bansal of Unchained Capital, April 2018 [1]. His post named the “HODL wave” pattern and notes that its age-distribution chart built on earlier work by @jratcliff [2].

Do HODL waves work for Ethereum?

The idea depends on knowing when each coin last moved, which comes naturally on UTXO chains like Bitcoin [1]. Account-based chains need approximations, so the picture is less precise.

Why does the oldest band keep growing?

Coins that never move keep ageing, and many very old coins are presumed lost, so the oldest bands tend to grow over time [1].

The bottom line#

HODL waves turn Bitcoin’s transaction history into a picture of how long coins have stayed still. Thick old bands point to holding; sudden growth in young bands points to old coins moving — for trading or for technical reasons.

Read the chart with its time lags and lost coins in mind, and pair it with coin days destroyed, SOPR and our guide to long-term vs short-term holders.

Sources#

Grade A = primary source (regulator, protocol specification, client code, original author). Grade B = expert secondary source used for explanation only.

  1. BGlassnode Docs. HODL Waves, 2026.
  2. AUnchained (Dhruv Bansal). Bitcoin Data Science (Pt. 1): HODL Waves, 2018.
  3. ABitcoin Developer Documentation (developer.bitcoin.org). Glossary, 2026.
  4. BLook Into Bitcoin. HODL Waves, 2026.
  5. BGlassnode Docs. Realized Cap HODL Waves, 2026.
  6. BCoin Metrics Data Knowledge Base. Market Capitalization (network data definitions), 2026.
  7. ABitcoin Developer Documentation (developer.bitcoin.org). Transactions (developer guide), 2026.
  8. BGlassnode Insights. Breaking up On-Chain Metrics for Short and Long Term Investors, 2020.
  9. AEuropean Supervisory Authorities (EBA, ESMA, EIOPA). EU financial regulators warn consumers on the risks of crypto-assets, 2022.