SOPR

What is SOPR?

SOPR (Spent Output Profit Ratio) is an on-chain Bitcoin metric introduced by Renato Shirakashi in 2019. Every coin that moves on-chain carries two prices: the price when its output was created and the price when it was spent. SOPR divides the combined fiat value of all outputs moved that day, priced at the moment they were spent, by the same outputs' value priced at the moment they were created. A reading above 1 means the coins that moved changed hands above their acquisition price, realizing profit in aggregate; below 1 means realized loss; exactly 1 is break-even. The interpretation assumes on-chain movement is a reasonable proxy for selling, which is approximate.

The 1.0 line is the behavioral anchor. In bull regimes, dips to 1.0 have tended to hold, read as holders refusing to sell at break-even or a loss; in bear regimes, rallies to 1.0 have tended to reject, read as trapped buyers exiting flat. Common refinements filter out very young outputs (adjusted SOPR, commonly excluding outputs under an hour old) or split the metric into short-term and long-term holder cohorts. Like MVRV, it measures aggregate profit-and-loss behavior, not order-book flow, and its signals are regime-dependent rather than mechanical.

The variants are where the resolution lives. Adjusted SOPR strips outputs younger than about an hour, removing the change outputs and relay hops that pad the raw series with break-even noise; short-term-holder SOPR restricts to coins younger than 155 days, the cohort that actually trades swings, making it the sensitive sentiment gauge of the family; long-term-holder SOPR tracks the old coins whose profit-taking marks cycle-scale distribution. The measurement caveats are constant across all of them: a transfer is not necessarily a sale, internal wallet reshuffles and exchange management moves pollute the numerator, and provider heuristics filter them only partially.

Reading practice keeps the regime first. The 1.0 grammar, support in bull phases and resistance in bear phases, only means something once the phase is known from elsewhere, so SOPR functions as a confirmation and excess gauge inside a stack: smoothed over a week for the working series, momentum-treated in oscillator builds, cross-checked against flow metrics that proxy intent where SOPR records outcomes. The honest boundary is the usual on-chain one, a handful of completed cycles behind every historical pattern, so the celebrated resets and rejections are tendencies with small samples, not laws.

How to identify SOPR readings

Choose the variant, smooth the series, and read the 1.0 line only inside a known regime.

1. 1Source the series from an on-chain data provider, noting that entity-adjustment heuristics differ across them.
2. 2Choose the variant: adjusted SOPR as the cleaner default, with short-term and long-term holder cohorts for sentiment and distribution reads respectively.
3. 3Smooth the daily series, a seven-day average commonly, since raw prints carry transfer noise.
4. 4Establish the regime from price structure and companion metrics before reading the line.
5. 5Apply the grammar: resets to 1.0 holding in uptrends, rejections at 1.0 in downtrends, with spikes and flushes flagged as profit-taking and capitulation excess.

How traders use it

• As a regime read: sustained readings above 1 with shallow resets characterize bull phases where profit-taking is absorbed, while sustained readings below 1 with rejections at the line characterize bear phases.
• As an excess gauge: sharp spikes above 1 flag heavy profit realization that has often preceded local cooling, and deep flushes below 1 mark capitulation-style loss-taking that has clustered near notable lows. Often is not always; both patterns fail.
• As one input in a broader stack: SOPR is usually cross-checked against valuation and flow metrics (see the on-chain valuation suite) rather than traded on its own.
• Through cohort splits: short-term-holder SOPR resets toward 1.0 serve as the swing-scale dip gauge, while long-term-holder SOPR surging marks old coins distributing, the cycle-scale companion read.
• In momentum form: smoothed and oscillator treatments of the series, the SOPR-momentum style builds, convert the regime gauge into something with crossings and divergences for faster consumption.

SOPR vs related on-chain gauges