Bitcoin’s price is making headlines again. BTC is up over 4% today, continuing April’s recovery from Q1 lows. But before you make any decisions based on price action alone, there’s a metric that tells you something far more important: how the people who actually own Bitcoin are behaving.
That metric is HODL Waves.
HODL Waves is one of the oldest and most respected frameworks in onchain analysis. It tracks what percentage of Bitcoin’s circulating supply last moved at various time intervals, from coins that moved yesterday to coins that haven’t moved in over a decade. The result is a layered, color-coded chart that reveals the behavioral makeup of the entire Bitcoin holder base.
Once you learn to read it, you’ll never look at Bitcoin through price alone again.
What Are HODL Waves?
HODL Waves was first introduced by Dhruv Bansal at Unchained in 2018. It builds on a concept called UTXO age. Every time Bitcoin moves on the blockchain, it creates an Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO). That UTXO ages until the coins move again, at which point it is destroyed and a new, younger UTXO is created.
By tracking the age of every UTXO in existence and grouping them into time bands, HODL Waves shows you what proportion of Bitcoin supply is being held for various lengths of time. The key bands are:
- 1 day to 1 week
- 1 week to 1 month
- 1 month to 3 months
- 3 months to 6 months
- 6 months to 12 months
- 1 year to 2 years
- 2 years to 3 years
- 3 years to 5 years
- 5 years to 7 years
- 7 years to 10 years
- 10 years and older (including likely lost coins)
When the young bands (days to months) are large, coins are moving frequently. When the old bands (1 year and above) dominate, supply is aging. Holders are not selling.
What HODL Waves Tell You About Market Psychology
The real power of HODL Waves is not in any single data point. It is in how the bands shift over time, and what those shifts reveal about investor behavior at different points in the cycle.
At cycle tops: When Bitcoin’s price peaks, long-term holders take profit. Old supply starts moving. The 1Y+ bands compress as coins that have been sitting for years finally change hands. The short-term bands swell as a surge of new buyers absorbs the distribution. Speculative capital floods in. The wave pattern shifts toward youth.
At cycle bottoms: The opposite happens. Speculative capital leaves the market. Short-term holders who bought near the top either sell at a loss or capitulate entirely. The supply that remains starts aging. Month by month, the 6m, 12m, and 2Y+ bands expand as fewer and fewer coins move. Conviction capital takes over.
This is the core insight: HODL Waves is a patience gauge. And patience, in Bitcoin’s history, has been the trait that distinguished winners from losers at every cycle.
Historical Examples: What the Waves Looked Like at Cycle Tops and Bottoms
The 2017 top: As Bitcoin surged toward $20,000 in late 2017, the HODL Waves chart showed a dramatic compression in the older bands. Long-term holders who had accumulated from $1,000 or below were distributing into the FOMO. By the time the top was confirmed, a wave of freshly moved supply had flooded the market. Young supply dominated the chart.
The 2020 to 2021 bull market: During this run, the pattern repeated. Old coins moved. New buyers absorbed them. By early 2021, a significant portion of circulating supply had last moved at prices well below the market. The distribution into the $64,000 top was visible in the waves months before price confirmed it.
The 2022 bear market bottom: At the FTX-era lows near $15,000 to $16,000, HODL Waves told a different story. Long-term holders had largely stopped selling. The 1Y+ bands began expanding again. Supply was aging under extreme fear, with holders unwilling to sell at those prices. The bear market bottom was characterized by exactly this pattern: conviction capital holding, speculative capital gone.
This is worth sitting with. At the most painful moment in the most recent bear market, onchain data was quietly showing one of the most bullish supply structures in Bitcoin’s history. It was one of six signals pointing to accumulation while price sentiment was at maximum fear.
Where HODL Waves Stands Right Now (April 2026)
As of April 2026, HODL Waves is showing one of the most striking readings in its history.
Approximately 73 to 80 percent of Bitcoin’s circulating supply has not moved in over 12 months. This is approaching the highest long-term holder supply share ever recorded for a period when Bitcoin is still trading well below its all-time high.
To put that in context: supply is aging at a rate consistent with confirmed bear market bottoms. The cohort that typically sells into fear, the short-term holders, has largely left the market. What remains is overwhelmingly composed of long-term conviction holders.
This aligns with several other metrics telling the same story. Bitcoin exchange reserves are at 8-year lows, meaning the supply available for immediate sale continues to contract. MVRV Z-Score has been in historically undervalued territory for most of Q1 2026. aSOPR spent most of Q1 below 1.0, indicating the average coin moved at a loss. These signals converge on the same behavioral profile.
The HODL Waves data does not tell you when price will move. It tells you who is holding Bitcoin right now, and how their behavior compares to prior cycle turning points.
The 1Y+ HODL Wave as a Standalone Signal
Within the full HODL Waves framework, the 1-year-plus band is the one most onchain analysts track as a standalone indicator. When this band rises above 60 to 65 percent, it historically marks deep value territory. When it falls rapidly, it signals active distribution.
Currently, the 1Y+ HODL Wave is above 70 percent and rising. The last times this metric was at comparable levels were the confirmed troughs of 2019 and 2022. In both cases, Bitcoin was significantly higher over the following 12 months.
That said, HODL Waves should always be read alongside other metrics. A rising 1Y+ band alongside compressing exchange reserves, low MVRV Z-Score, and suppressed aSOPR creates a far more compelling case than any single signal alone. If you want a systematic approach to this, the five-metric weekly checklist covers exactly this kind of multi-signal convergence.
How to Access HODL Waves for Free
HODL Waves is available on several free platforms:
- Unchained (unchained.com/hodlwaves): The original HODL Waves chart, clean and easy to read
- LookIntoBitcoin (lookintobitcoin.com): Includes HODL Waves alongside other onchain metrics
- Bitbo (charts.bitbo.io/hodl-waves): Simple, regularly updated visualization
- Glassnode (glassnode.com): More granular data; some views require a free account
For the 1Y+ HODL Wave as a standalone metric, both Bitbo and Bitcoin Magazine Pro offer clean free versions that update daily.
HODL Waves in Context: What It Can and Cannot Tell You
HODL Waves is a behavioral confirmation tool, not a price prediction tool. It shows you how the humans holding Bitcoin are acting, not when price will respond to that behavior.
What it can tell you:
- Whether the current holder base looks more like a cycle top or a cycle bottom
- How much supply is in “strong hands” relative to short-term speculative capital
- Whether distribution (old coins moving) is happening at the market level
- How current behavioral patterns compare to prior cycle turning points
What it cannot tell you:
- The exact price at which the next move will occur
- How long the current pattern will persist
- Whether macro factors (interest rates, geopolitical events) will override onchain structure
Used alongside miner metrics like the Puell Multiple, exchange flow data, and valuation models like MVRV, HODL Waves becomes part of a complete onchain picture rather than a single data point.
The Bottom Line
Bitcoin’s price moves in cycles. So does holder behavior. HODL Waves makes the behavioral cycle visible.
When old supply stays still through fear and drawdown, that is not weakness. It is the data signature of conviction capital holding its position. Every major Bitcoin recovery in history has been preceded by exactly this pattern: extended aging of supply while sentiment was at or near maximum pessimism.
The current reading in April 2026 is consistent with prior bottoming phases. Whether that means price follows is something no metric can guarantee. But knowing what the data says, and what it has said at comparable moments in prior cycles, is where onchain analysis earns its edge.
That is the point of HODL Waves. Not to predict. To see clearly.
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