BTC: Long-Term Holder Resistance and Short-Term Holder Support
Shown as its 2019–2022 sample; the latest readings and full history are included with Pro.
Where the BTC of long-term holders (coins at least 155 days old) and of short-term holders (younger coins) was last acquired, day by day: two heatmaps of supply by cost-basis price band on one time axis, with the BTC price drawn through both. Dense long-term supply just above the price is marked as resistance, dense short-term supply just below it as support.
Why use it. Holders whose coins cost more than the price often sell when it returns to their cost, to get out even, so dense long-term supply just above the price can slow a rally; recent buyers tend to defend their cost, so dense short-term supply just below the price can slow a fall. Each cohort has its own colour scale, so the short-term map stays readable although long-term holders hold most of the coins. How to read it. Top panel: long-term holders, in blue. Bottom panel: short-term holders, in orange. Each column is a UTC day and each row a price band on a log scale: about 1.5% wide (150 per decade) when the days shown span up to about two decades of price, about 8% wide (30 per decade) for wider ranges and for Full range. Darker colour (brighter on the dark theme) means more BTC at that cost, on a logarithmic colour scale normalised separately for each panel over the days and prices shown. The line is the BTC price. The price axis opens fitted to the price range of the days shown, with a margin; Full range shows every band. The Resistance bracket and the Support arrow mark the zones the rule below picks on the last day shown. They describe where supply sits on that day; they are not a forecast of where the price will turn.
Calculation. Supply summed per day into fixed bands of cost basis: band j of the fine grid holds costs from 10^(j/150) to 10^((j+1)/150) USD per BTC, band k of the 30-per-decade grid from 10^(k/30) to 10^((k+1)/30); five fine bands make one wide band exactly. Long-term and short-term holders are split at 155 days since the output was created, by block header time, the site's long/short-term boundary. Markers, from the last day shown, with P that day's price, on the 30-per-decade bands: resistance candidates are the long-term bands entirely above the band that contains P and starting below 1.3 × P (within +30%); support candidates are the short-term bands entirely below that band and ending above 0.7 × P (within −30%). On each side the candidate holding the most supply is the peak (on a tie, the one nearest the price), and the zone is the run of adjacent candidates around it each holding at least half the peak's supply. The chart gives each zone's price range, its distance from P, its supply and that supply's share of the cohort's priced supply; a side with no supply within 30% has no zone. Long ranges show one day out of every few so that the picture fits the screen; the markers always use the full last day, and the CSV download has every day and band with each day's own zones. Each unspent output is valued at its creation-day price: the BTC/USD price at the start of the UTC day its block was mined, the same basis as the site's realized price. Computed by CryptoKeyhole from its own Bitcoin node's record of every unspent output by creation day. A coin's cost basis resets whenever it moves, including self-transfers, change outputs and exchange shuffles, so the distribution shows when coins last moved on the blockchain, not when their owners bought them, and outputs are not owners. Coins created before 18 July 2010, the first day with a BTC/USD price, have no cost basis: they are a separate unknown-basis amount (about 7.7% of supply), outside the price axis. Daily from 18 July 2010, the first day the BTC/USD price index covers; the 7-, 30- and 90-day changes start that many days later. Each value describes holdings after the UTC day's last block, valued at that day's closing price. The open day is a labelled partial, updated each hour with the latest completed hour, and is replaced by the final row once the day closes.