Glossary

200-week moving average#

Also: 200W MA, 200-week average, 200WMA

The 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.

Our own series starts in June 2021, because that is when we have 200 weeks of closes to average — charts showing this line back in 2015 are using history we have not verified. Within that window bitcoin closed below the line in 47 of 268 weeks, roughly one week in six, once for thirty weeks in a row, and as far as 34% beneath it. So “price does not stay below the 200-week line” is not what our data says: it goes below regularly and can stay there for the better part of a year. Treat it as a slow context line, not a floor.

All-time high#

Also: ATH

The highest price an asset has ever traded at. “Distance from the all-time high” says how far below that peak today sits.

Everywhere on this site the figure is the highest daily close, not the highest price ever printed. Intraday spikes go higher — bitcoin’s highest close and its highest tick are not the same number — but a daily close is the only price we store, and mixing the two would make the distance look smaller than it is.

Annualised#

Also: annualized, a year

A figure rescaled to what it would amount to over one year, so that periods of different lengths can be compared. An annualised return of 35% means the average yearly pace, not the total.

Annualised volatility works the same way: the daily swing scaled up to a yearly figure. It is a unit conversion, not a forecast — nothing about it says the next year will look like the last one.

Average buy price#

Also: cost basis

What you actually paid on average for what you hold: total money in divided by total coins out. Everything above it is an unrealised gain, everything below it an unrealised loss.

Bitcoin dominance#

Also: dominance

Bitcoin’s share of the total value of all crypto, in percent. Rising dominance usually means money is moving out of smaller coins and into bitcoin.

Block height#

Also: block, height, blocks

Bitcoin records transactions in blocks, one roughly every ten minutes. The block height is simply how many blocks exist so far — a clock that ticks in blocks instead of seconds.

Because bitcoin’s issuance schedule is written in blocks rather than dates, a countdown to a halving is really a countdown to a block number, converted into a date at an assumed pace.

Block subsidy#

Also: block reward, subsidy, issuance

The new bitcoin paid to whoever mines a block. It is the only way new coins come into existence, and the halving is the moment it is cut in half.

CAGR#

Also: compound annual growth rate

The single yearly rate that would take a starting amount to an ending amount over the period, compounding along the way. It answers “what yearly pace was this?” for money that sat in one place the whole time.

It says nothing about the path. A CAGR of 30% over three years is the same number whether the asset climbed steadily or fell 70% and then recovered. It is also the wrong measure for money that arrived in instalments — for that see IRR.

Capitulation#

The 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.

The opposite end is euphoria: buying because the price is rising, by people who would not have bought at half the price. Our index reads the same market on that scale, from 0 to 100.

Cold storage#

Also: hardware wallet

Keeping the keys to your coins on a device that never connects to the internet, or on paper in a safe. It removes the risk of an online account being drained and adds the risk of you losing the device.

Concentration risk#

The exposure that comes from holding a small number of things rather than many. Two assets that tend to move together concentrate risk more than their count suggests.

We mention it because this site covers exactly two assets, and their daily logarithmic returns correlate at about 0.80 over our whole history — nearer 0.87 over the last year — so a bitcoin-and-ether split is one bet expressed twice more than it is two bets. That is a fact about the pair, not a view on what anyone should hold: how much concentration is appropriate depends on the rest of a person’s finances, which we know nothing about.

Correlation#

A number between −1 and +1 saying how closely two things move together. At +1 they rise and fall in step, at 0 there is no relationship, at −1 they move in opposite directions.

Bitcoin and ether are usually strongly correlated, which matters to anyone holding both: two assets that move together give less diversification than the count of two suggests.

Counterparty risk#

The risk that whoever is holding your coins, or owes you something, fails to deliver. An exchange balance, a lending product and a staking provider all carry it; coins in your own wallet do not.

It is a separate axis from price. A holding can be right about the market and still be lost because of where it was kept. We state that the category exists because most of the numbers on this site are prices, and prices do not carry any information about custody.

Coverage#

Our own honesty field: how much of the index’s normal component weight was actually available on a given day. Coverage below 100% means a data source was missing and the reading rests on fewer inputs.

It is published next to the value on the home page and in the JSON API rather than hidden, because a reading built from three components out of four is not the same reading.

Daily candle#

Also: candle, daily close, weekly close

One 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.

We only ever read closed days. A price taken mid-day would keep changing under the reader, and the same date would show a different number depending on when you looked.

Dollar-cost averaging#

Also: DCA

Buying a fixed amount of money’s worth on a fixed schedule — say $200 on the first of every month — instead of trying to pick the moment. You automatically buy more coins when the price is low and fewer when it is high.

It does not promise a profit and it does not beat a perfectly timed lump sum. What it removes is the decision, which is the part most people get wrong. Our calculator replays it over real daily closes so you can see what it would actually have done.

Drawdown#

How far a price has fallen from its own highest point, in percent. A 60% drawdown means the price sits 60% below the peak — and needs a 150% rise just to get back to it.

Drawdowns are the honest measure of what holding costs. Bitcoin has had several deeper than 70% and has recovered from all of them so far, which is a fact about the past and not a promise about the next one.

Epoch#

The stretch of 210,000 blocks between two halvings — about four years. Within one epoch the amount of new bitcoin per block never changes.

ETF#

Also: exchange-traded fund, spot ETF

A fund that trades on an ordinary stock exchange and holds the asset on your behalf. A spot bitcoin ETF lets someone buy exposure through a normal brokerage account without ever touching a wallet.

Convenience about custody, in exchange for a management fee and for the fact that you own a claim on coins rather than the coins themselves.

Fear & Greed Index#

Also: F&G, Crypto Fear and Greed Index

A 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.

It measures sentiment, not value, and it is noisy from day to day. We use a seven-day average of it so that a single loud news cycle cannot move our own index much. It is not the same thing as our Hodlometer Index: this one is somebody else’s reading of today’s mood, and it makes up a quarter of ours.

Funding rate#

A 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.

Sustained positive funding means leveraged bullish positions are crowded, and crowded positions unwind badly. It is the fastest-moving of our four components, which is exactly why it carries the smallest weight.

Gas fee#

Also: gas

The fee for having a transaction processed on Ethereum. It is quoted in gwei and rises when the network is busy, the way a taxi costs more at rush hour.

Gwei#

The unit Ethereum fees are quoted in: one gwei is a billionth of an ether. Writing fees in whole ether would mean counting zeros, so the small unit is used instead.

Halving#

Also: halvening

Every 210,000 blocks — roughly four years — the new bitcoin paid out per block is cut in half. It is fixed in the code and is why bitcoin’s supply growth keeps slowing towards a cap of 21 million coins.

The four-year market cycle is usually explained by it. Three past halvings are three data points, and each one also coincided with something else going on in the world, so treat the pattern as suggestive rather than mechanical.

Hashrate#

How much computing power is competing to add the next bitcoin block. More of it makes blocks arrive faster, until the network adjusts its difficulty roughly every two weeks to bring the pace back to ten minutes.

This is why a halving date can only be an estimate: blocks run slightly fast or slow between adjustments, and the drift accumulates over tens of thousands of blocks.

HODL#

Also: hodler, holder

Crypto slang for holding through the swings instead of trading them. It began as a typo for “hold” in a 2013 forum post and stuck.

It is also where this site’s name comes from, and its whole editorial line. Every measure here is slow on purpose: a number that changes meaningfully within a day is not useful to somebody thinking in years.

Hodlometer Index#

Also: the index

Our own 0–100 reading of how hot the bitcoin and ether market is compared with its own last four years. Zero is deep capitulation, one hundred is euphoria.

It combines four measures: the Mayer Multiple and the distance to the 200-week moving average (price against its own trend, 60% between them), the Fear & Greed Index (25%) and perpetual funding rates (15%). Each is converted into a percentile of its own history, so the scale means the same thing in any year. It is not a renamed Fear & Greed Index: that one is a quarter of this, and the other three quarters are price and positioning.

IRR#

Also: internal rate of return, money-weighted return

The yearly rate that makes a series of payments in and out add up to zero once each is discounted for how long it was invested. It is the right rate for money that went in a bit at a time.

This is why a DCA result and a lump-sum result cannot be compared as plain percentages. In a lump sum every dollar is invested for the whole period; with regular buying the average dollar is invested for roughly half of it, so the same profit represents a different rate. IRR weights each payment by the time it was actually at work.

Layer 1#

Also: L1, base chain

The base blockchain itself — Bitcoin, Ethereum — as opposed to the faster, cheaper networks built on top of it. This site covers only the two largest layer 1s.

Leverage#

Also: leveraged, deleveraging

Borrowing so that a position is bigger than the money behind it. It multiplies gains and losses alike, and forced closures of leveraged positions are what turn ordinary declines into sharp ones.

Liquidation#

Also: liquidated

When a leveraged position has lost so much that the exchange closes it automatically to recover the borrowed money. Waves of liquidations make a fall faster and deeper than the news behind it would explain.

Log scale#

Also: logarithmic scale, logarithmic

A chart axis where the same vertical distance always means the same percentage change, not the same number of dollars. On something that went from $1 to $100,000 it is the only way to see the early years at all.

On a normal (linear) axis a move from $100 to $200 looks tiny next to a move from $60,000 to $60,100, even though the first doubled your money and the second did nothing. Long-range charts here default to log for that reason.

Lump sum#

Putting the whole amount in at once, on one date, instead of spreading it over months. It is the comparison every discussion of scheduled buying eventually turns into.

On rising markets a lump sum usually wins on paper, because the money is invested for longer. It also concentrates every bit of the outcome into one date you had to choose in advance.

Market capitalisation#

Also: market cap

Price multiplied by the number of coins in circulation. It is a size label, not the amount of money that has gone in — a single trade at a higher price lifts the figure for every coin at once.

Market cycle#

Also: cycle, bull market, bear market

The pattern crypto has followed so far: a long rise into a peak, a fall of 70% or more, a quiet stretch, then a new rise. Each round has taken roughly four years.

Everything here compares today with the last four years, which is one cycle. That window is a choice, not a law: it makes readings comparable across time, and it means a genuinely unprecedented market can only read as extreme, never as new.

Mayer Multiple#

Also: Mayer

Today’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.

Named after Trace Mayer, who popularised it. The widely repeated “above 2.4 is overheated” threshold came from a retrospective simulation of regular buying, not from a model of anything: in our own series it has been crossed once, in early 2021, and it stayed silent through every high that followed — bitcoin’s October 2025 peak arrived at 1.177. That is why we rank the reading as a percentile of its own recent history instead of comparing it with a fixed number, and why we compute it separately for BTC and ETH, whose distributions are nothing alike.

Moving average#

Also: MA, simple moving average, SMA

The average price over the last N days or weeks, recalculated every day. It smooths out daily noise so the trend underneath becomes visible.

A moving average always lags: it describes where price has been, never where it is going. Its use here is as a yardstick — how far above or below its own recent history is price sitting today.

Normalised#

Also: normalized, re-baselined

Rescaled so that different things can be put on one chart or one scale. Setting each cycle’s price to 100 on its halving day, for example, lets cycles of different sizes be compared by shape.

On-chain#

Anything recorded in the blockchain itself — transactions, balances, fees — as opposed to activity inside an exchange’s private books. On-chain data is public, which is why so much crypto analysis is built on it.

Open interest#

Also: OI

The total size of futures positions currently open. Rising open interest means more borrowed money is riding on the market; a sudden drop usually means positions were closed or forcibly liquidated.

Order book#

The live list of everyone’s offers to buy and sell on an exchange, matched by price. Buying through it is usually far cheaper than a one-tap “buy now” button, which hides its margin in the price.

Percentile#

Where a number sits inside its own history. A reading in the 70th percentile is higher than 70% of all readings over the period being compared — for us, the last four years.

We use percentiles instead of fixed thresholds because “expensive” in 2018 and “expensive” today are not the same number. The cost is that a genuinely unprecedented market can only ever read as 100.

Perpetual futures#

Also: perps, perpetuals, perpetual contract

Futures 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.

Realised and unrealised#

Also: realized, unrealised gain, paper profit

A gain or loss is unrealised while you still hold the asset — it exists on paper and changes every day. It becomes realised the moment you sell, and only then is it money.

Sats#

Also: satoshi, satoshis

The smallest unit of a bitcoin: one hundred-millionth of one, or 0.00000001 BTC. Named after Satoshi Nakamoto, and convenient for talking about small amounts without a row of zeros.

Self-custody#

Also: not your keys

Holding your own coins with your own keys instead of leaving them with an exchange. It removes the risk that somebody else loses them and puts the entire responsibility on you.

The trade is real in both directions. Exchanges have failed and taken customer balances with them; people have also lost their own keys permanently. Neither option is the safe one by default.

Spot price#

Also: spot

The price to buy or sell right now, as opposed to a futures price for some date ahead. Wherever this site says “price” without qualification, it means spot.

Spread#

The gap between the price you can buy at and the price you can sell at. On simplified “buy now” flows it is often wider than the stated fee and is not shown separately, so it is easy to pay several percent without noticing.

Stablecoin#

A crypto token designed to stay worth about one dollar, held steady by reserves or by a mechanism. Most crypto trading is priced in stablecoins rather than in bank dollars.

Staking#

Also: proof of stake

Locking up ether to help run the Ethereum network and earning a small yield for doing so. It is Ethereum’s replacement for mining, and locked coins can be penalised if the operator misbehaves.

It matters for how ether is measured here. Every ETH figure on this site is a price, and price is not the whole return for a staked coin — a staker also receives new ether. So a bitcoin-versus-ether comparison drawn from prices alone is a comparison of price returns, and understates staked ether by whatever the yield was. We do not publish a total-return series: it would need a yield history per provider and a set of assumptions about compounding and fees that we cannot verify. Stating the gap is honest; filling it with an estimate would not be. Staking also introduces lock-ups, slashing and, when done through a service, counterparty risk.

Tax lot#

One specific parcel of coins with its own purchase date and price. Someone who bought on twenty occasions holds twenty lots, not one average position, and many tax systems track them separately.

The distinction shows up whenever coins are sold: which lot is deemed sold changes the gain on paper, and the rules for choosing differ by country. We raise it only so the word is not new when it appears elsewhere — every calculator on this site works with one blended average, tax is ignored everywhere, and none of this is tax advice.

Total return#

Also: price return

The whole return from holding something: the price change plus any income it paid along the way. Price return is the price change alone.

For bitcoin the two are the same — holding it pays nothing. For staked ether they are not, because staking pays in ether. Every chart and ratio on this site is built from prices, so it is a price-return view of both assets, which is comparable across them but incomplete for ether.

Volatility#

How much a price swings about, usually stated as an annualised percentage. Bitcoin’s volatility has historically run several times that of a broad stock index.

High volatility is not the same thing as a high chance of loss, and it cuts both ways: it is why the drawdowns are deep and why the recoveries are fast.