The Puell Multiple — Reading the Miners

From The Weekly BOLT · July 6, 2026

Over the past several weeks we've built out the on-chain toolkit from the holder's side: MVRV and realized price (what holders paid), SOPR (whether moved coins sell at a profit or loss), NUPL (the network's unrealized profit/loss), HODL Waves (who holds and for how long), and exchange flows (coins moving to or from the market). This week, with Bitcoin bouncing off a 20-month low and everyone asking whether the bottom is in, we turn to a metric that looks at the market from an entirely different and often-overlooked angle: the miners. The Puell Multiple is one of the most reliable bottom-and-top indicators in all of on-chain analysis, and it's especially worth understanding right now.

The Basics: The Puell Multiple measures miner revenue relative to its own recent history. Specifically, it's the ratio of the daily value of newly issued Bitcoin (in US dollars) to the 365-day moving average of that daily issuance value:

Puell Multiple = (Daily Coin Issuance in USD) ÷ (365-day average of Daily Coin Issuance in USD)

Because the number of new coins issued per day is fixed by the protocol (post-halving, it's about 450 BTC per day), the daily dollar value of issuance moves almost entirely with price. So the Puell Multiple is really asking: how does miner revenue right now compare to the average miner revenue over the past year? A low reading means miners are earning far less than their annual average — a sign of financial stress. A high reading means they're earning far more — a sign of potential overheating.

Why It Matters: Miners are Bitcoin's only structural, non-discretionary sellers. They have real-world costs — electricity, hardware, payroll — denominated in dollars, so they must sell a portion of the Bitcoin they earn to stay solvent, regardless of price. This makes their behavior a uniquely useful signal. When the Puell Multiple falls into its low band (historically below ~0.5), miner revenue is so compressed that the least efficient miners are forced to capitulate — selling everything, and sometimes shutting off machines entirely. That capitulation flushes the last marginal sellers out of the market, and historically it has clustered almost perfectly around major cycle bottoms. Conversely, when the Puell Multiple spikes into its high band (historically above ~4), miners are earning windfall profits and tend to sell aggressively into strength — a pattern that has marked cycle tops. It's a clean, supply-side read on when selling pressure is exhausted versus overheated.