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The Hodlometer Index
How hot is the market right now?
One number from 0 to 100, rebuilt every day from four slow, boring measures of bitcoin and ether. Zero is deep capitulationCapitulationThe stage of a decline where holders who swore they would never sell finally do. It looks like heavy selling into weakness and, in hindsight, has often come near a bottom.Full entry in the glossary →, one hundred is euphoria. It is a thermometer, not a forecast — it describes today in the language of the last four years.
New here?
Hodlometer takes the measures that long-term bitcoin and ether holders actually watch, puts them on one 0–100 scale, and shows its work. If you buy and hold across years rather than trade, it answers one question: is this an ordinary moment or an unusual one?
Cool
Below-average heat: interest is low, price sits under its own trend.
+1.6 over a week · +12.5 over a month · −50.3 over a year
28 days in Cool, since . The zone has changed 161 times in 3,097 days, about once every 19 days.
BTC $63,011 −49.6% from its high · ETH $1,867 −61.4% from its high
Reading for — the last closed daily candle, UTC.
How it is calculated Put it on your site
Free JSON API — no key, CORS open.
What the number is made of
-
Mayer MultipleMayer MultipleToday’s price divided by its own 200-day average. Above 1 means price is running ahead of its recent trend, below 1 that it is lagging. There is no level at which it starts meaning something else.Full entry in the glossary → 28.4
-
Distance to 200-week MA200-week moving averageThe average weekly closing price over the last 200 weeks — about four years, roughly one bitcoin cycle. It moves slowly, which makes it a context line rather than a signal.Full entry in the glossary → 15.2
-
Fear & Greed (7-day avg)Fear & Greed IndexA 0–100 mood score published daily by alternative.me, built from volatility, market momentum, social media and surveys. Low numbers mean the crowd is frightened, high numbers mean it is excited.Full entry in the glossary → 23.5
-
Funding rate (7-day avg)Funding rateA small payment traders in perpetual futures make to each other, usually every eight hours, which keeps the futures price tethered to the spot price. When it is positive, the people betting on a rise are paying the people betting on a fall.Full entry in the glossary → 51.5
Each score is a percentile: 70 means “hotter than 70% of the readings in the last four years”. Each name links to its own page. What each component measures →
Fear & Greed is the one input we do not work out ourselves: alternative.me publishes it daily, we take a week of it, and it counts for a quarter of the number above. It is an ingredient here, not a second opinion. How the two differ →
The last 180 days
Full scale 0–100, so the shape is not flattered by zooming.
- Low
- 8.7
- High
- 36.0
- Now
- 26.7
History goes back to 7 Feb 2018 (3097 days) — pull the whole series with
/api/index?history=3650
What the thermometer is reading
The daily closesDaily candleOne day of trading summed up as four prices: open, high, low and close. “The last closed daily candle” means the most recent finished UTC day, not the part-day still in progress.Full entry in the glossary → of bitcoin and ether over the past year — the series the Mayer Multiple and the 200-week average above are measured against. Both panels cover the same span in percentage terms, so an equal slope means an equal move.
Bitcoin BTC
- Past year
- −45.7%
- Days since its high
- 298
That high — $124,740 on — is the highest daily close in the series we hold, which starts .
Ethereum ETH
- Past year
- −49.7%
- Days since its high
- 343
That high — $4,818 on — is the highest daily close in the series we hold, which starts .
See both prices from the first close we hold
Plus every fall deeper than 30%, dated and measured — 10 for bitcoin, 8 for ether.
The index in its own history
Every component above is shown against its own past on its own page. This is the same treatment for the headline number: where today sits among all 3,097 days we have computed.
Today against 3,097 days
Bars are the whole computed history, five points of the scale each, coloured by zone. The highlighted column, labelled Today, is where this reading falls.
- Percentile
- 20th
- Median
- 44.1
- Lowest
- 1.7
- Highest
- 96.6
Colder than today on 629 days, hotter on 2,466. Low 1.7 on 14 Dec 2018, high 96.6 on 19 Feb 2021.
How often each zone happens
Share of the 3,097 computed days spent in each band, since 7 Feb 2018.
| Zone | Range | Days | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deep Freeze | 0–20 | 415 | 13.4% |
| Cool | 20–40 | 897 | 29.0% |
| Neutral | 40–60 | 969 | 31.3% |
| Warm | 60–80 | 602 | 19.4% |
| Overheated | 80–100 | 214 | 6.9% |
Extremes are rare because the index is an average of four percentiles, and averages pull towards the middle — not because the market visits them rarely. The same table with the full explanation is on the methodology page.
This page shows where the index has been, and deliberately stops there. It does not publish what happened to price after each zone: why we do not.
What is this?
Built for holders, not traders
Three quarters of it is price and sentiment measured against their own four-year history — nothing in it reacts to a single day.
-
Price against its own trend 60%
The Mayer Multiple and the distance to the 200-week moving average.
-
Crowd sentiment 25%
The Fear & Greed Index, averaged over a week.
-
Leverage 15%
Funding rates in the perpetual futuresPerpetual futuresFutures contracts with no expiry date — the main way crypto is traded with borrowed money. Because they never settle, a recurring funding payment is what keeps their price tied to the spot market.Full entry in the glossary → market.
If you buy every month and plan to keep doing that for years, the useful question is not “what happens tomorrow” but “is this an ordinary moment or an unusual one”. That is the only question this number answers.
What it will not do
It is a description of today, not a signal — and one market seen from four angles, not four independent opinions.
- Tell you to buy or sellA high reading has preceded both drawdowns and much larger rallies; a low one has preceded both recoveries and deeper lows.
- Give you four independent opinionsThree of the four components move with price. This is one market seen from four angles.
- Predict tomorrowEvery input is measured against four years of its own history, so nothing here reacts to a single day — by design.
Everything about the calculation is public, including the parts we are not happy with — see the limitations. If a number cannot be reproduced from public data, it is marketing.
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One quiet email a week
No trade calls, no “urgent” anything, no selling your address to anyone. Five lines, the same five every week:
- Where the index is — 26.7, Cool
- What it did since last week — +1.6 points, 28 days in the zone
- Which component moved it — each of the four with its percentile
- Prices and distance from the high — BTC −49.6%
- Anything new on the site — new tools and articles, nothing else
We send one link to confirm the address — until you open it, it is not on the list. Not started yet: signups are collected for the launch issue, and every issue will carry a one-click unsubscribe.