Bitcoin’s share of supply in profit stood at 60.6% on Thursday after falling to 50.8% on Feb. 5 — its lowest level since Jan. 2, 2023 — leaving a large group of holders at breakeven or underwater. Historically, the 50–60% supply-in-profit range has often coincided with cycle resets that preceded major rallies. For example, in January 2023 BTC traded near $16,682 while supply-in-profit hovered around 51% before a subsequent surge; similarly, in March 2020 supply-in-profit dipped below 50% when BTC was roughly $6,500 ahead of the 2021 run-up to prior highs.
Over the past five years, the 50–60% band has repeatedly marked stretches where many holders were close to their cost basis, compressing unrealized gains and reducing immediate selling incentives. That makes the band a useful accumulation signal, but not a precise indicator of a price bottom — it signals concentration of holdings more than an exact floor.
A key distinction in the current cycle is long-term holder behavior. Previous cycle troughs aligned with long-term holder net unrealized profit/loss (LTH‑NUPL) turning negative — seen in 2015, 2018 and 2022 — a sign that long-term investors were holding at a loss. Today LTH‑NUPL sits near 0.40, indicating that long-term holders remain comfortably profitable even as overall supply profitability has approached historically low ranges.
Institutional changes matter as well. Corporations and spot exchange-traded funds now hold an estimated 15.8% of circulating BTC, roughly 3.32 million coins. These entities typically have longer holding horizons and are less sensitive to short-term price swings. That concentration of institutional supply reduces the chance that compressed profitability will trigger the same degree of forced selling from long-term holders seen in earlier cycles, helping explain why supply-in-profit can return to historical accumulation zones while LTH profitability stays elevated.
Exchange flow data also points to diminished reactive selling from short-term participants. Short-term holder inflows to Binance fell to about 25,000 BTC on March 25, a new market low compared with roughly 100,000 BTC during the early-February sell-off, suggesting weaker selling pressure from newer market entrants.
Valuation metrics provide additional context for where deeper stress has historically appeared. Conditions such as market-value-to-realized-value (MVRV) below 1, NUPL under −0.2, and a Puell Multiple near 0.35 have tended to show up during periods of heavy retail pressure and relative undervaluation. While none of these indicators pinpoint exact bottoms, they help identify zones where downside risk has historically been limited compared with long-term upside, offering useful perspective as supply-in-profit revisits prior accumulation ranges.