NVT Signal

Data to 2026-09-12. On-chain metrics are fetched on a rotation, so this can trail the build by a few days.

How to read it

NVT is the closest thing Bitcoin has to a price-to-earnings ratio. It compares the value of the network against the value actually being settled across it. A high reading means the market is paying a lot per unit of economic throughput; a low reading means the network is busy relative to its valuation.

How it's calculated

Network value divided by transaction volume, smoothed with a moving average so that single large transfers do not dominate the signal.

What it did in past cycles

NVT is the least well-behaved metric on this site, and its own record is the reason to say so. Readings at the four cycle tops: 28.3 (2013-12-04), 16.4 (2017-12-16), 6.2 (2021-11-08), 32.7 (2025-10-06).

There is no pattern there — the 2021 top registered the lowest reading in the series' modern history and the 2025 top one of the highest. The bottoms are no tidier: 7.3 (2015-01-14), 10.3 (2018-12-15), 5.3 (2022-11-09). In 2021 the peak and trough readings were 6.2 and 5.3, almost indistinguishable.

The most likely explanation is the denominator rather than the market. Settlement steadily migrated off-chain through the 2017–2021 period and some of it has since returned in different form, so the ratio has been measuring a changing definition of activity rather than a changing valuation.

What it doesn't tell you

On-chain volume is a poor proxy for economic activity. It misses everything settled off-chain — exchange internal ledgers, Lightning, custodial transfers — and counts change outputs and self-sends that represent no economic exchange at all. As more activity moves off-chain, NVT drifts upward for reasons that have nothing to do with valuation.

The cycle-peak readings below are the evidence for exactly that. They do not form a range, they form a scatter, and no threshold drawn across this chart survives contact with more than one cycle. Read NVT as a description of how much settlement the chain is carrying relative to its valuation, and not as a valuation signal in its own right.

Reading it with other metrics

Because on-chain volume is what makes NVT unstable, read it next to the other throughput metrics rather than the valuation ones. Coin Days Destroyed and Liveliness describe the same chain activity weighted by coin age, which separates 'the chain is busy' from 'old supply is moving'.

If the question is valuation, MVRV and AVIV Z-Score answer it with far more consistency across cycles.