SOPR — Are Holders Selling at a Profit or a Loss?

From The Weekly BOLT · June 1, 2026

Last week we covered MVRV — the ratio of Bitcoin's market value to its realized value, which tells you whether the network as a whole is sitting on unrealized profit or loss. This week we continue down the on-chain analytics track with a metric that rests on the same cost-basis foundation but answers a different question: when coins actually move on-chain, are their owners selling at a profit or a loss? That metric is SOPR — the Spent Output Profit Ratio.

The Basics: Every time a Bitcoin UTXO is spent (moved), the network can compare two prices: the price when that coin was last acquired, and the price at the moment it's being spent. SOPR is simply the ratio of the two:

SOPR = (price when the coin is sold) ÷ (price when the coin was last acquired)

Aggregate that across every coin moved in a given period and you get a single number. If SOPR is above 1.0, the average coin being moved is being sold at a profit. If SOPR is below 1.0, the average coin moved is being sold at a loss. If SOPR is exactly 1.0, holders are, on average, breaking even.

Why It Matters: SOPR is one of the most useful real-time sentiment gauges in Bitcoin because it tells you what holders are actually doing with their coins, not what they're saying. A few patterns are worth knowing. In a healthy bull market, SOPR tends to stay above 1.0 — people are taking profits as price rises, but the 1.0 level acts as support, because holders are reluctant to sell at a loss and dip-buyers step in whenever SOPR threatens to break below break-even. When SOPR repeatedly fails to hold 1.0 and spends sustained time below it, that signals capitulation — holders are giving up and selling at a loss, which historically clusters around cycle bottoms. And when SOPR runs far above 1.0 for an extended period, it signals that a lot of profit-taking is happening, which often accompanies local tops.

There's also a refined version called aSOPR (adjusted SOPR), which filters out coins held for less than an hour — removing the noise from exchange-internal transfers and people simply moving coins between their own wallets. aSOPR gives a cleaner read on genuine economic spending. Analysts also watch SOPR split by cohort: Short-Term Holder SOPR (coins moved that are younger than ~155 days) captures the behavior of recent, more speculative buyers, while Long-Term Holder SOPR captures the conviction crowd. When short-term holders are capitulating (STH-SOPR well below 1.0) while long-term holders stay put, that's often a sign that weak hands are being flushed out — frequently a constructive setup.