Methodology — reading the Realised Cap HODL chart
Realised cap is the aggregate cost basis of the coin supply: for every unspent output it is coins × the spot price at the time those coins were created. Summed over all UTXOs it gives the market's total invested capital, and grouping UTXOs by the age of the output gives the capital held by each cohort. This page plots each cohort's realised cap as a share of the total, stacked to 100% (a "Realised Cap HODL" / age-band chart). It answers the question: who actually owns the cost basis?

The numbers in the tweet, straight off this series (latest)

  • Long-term holders (>6 months) hold ≈74.6% of realised cap — the dominant cohort by a wide margin.
  • The 3y+ cohort holds only ≈10.6%, despite owning coins for years.
  • The single biggest band is 6m–1y at ≈30.8% — relatively recent buyers who have refused to sell into the bear.
Because realised cap weights by cost basis, recent buyers at high prices loom large, while old coins bought cheaply carry a small dollar weight even when they are a big share of supply.

Age bands

The 23 native Bitcoin Research Kit age ranges are aggregated into 12 Glassnode-style bands: <1d, 1d–1w, 1w–1m, 1m–3m, 3m–6m, 6m–1y, 1y–2y, 2y–3y, 3y–5y, 5y–7y, 7y–10y, >10y, ordered youngest (bottom, hot colours) to oldest (top, green). Use All age bands for the full HODL view, or Focus: 6m–1y & 1y–3y to isolate the two middle cohorts (only those bands are drawn, so the stack tops out below 100% in that view — the remainder is hidden, not zero).

Reading it

A fattening young band (bottom) = fresh capital entering at higher prices. A widening old band (top) = older, cheaper coins surviving and accumulating weight as price rises. Rotation shows up as the stack shifting colours upward over a cycle. The white BTC price line (log, right axis) is context only.

Data & caveats

Data is the free bitview.space Bitcoin Research Kit API (height/day series), fetched daily by realised-cap-hodl-update.py; denominator = BRK total realised cap (the bands sum to it exactly). Vendor-to-vendor levels differ slightly from Glassnode / CryptoQuant because UTXO-ageing and cost-basis conventions differ at the margin. Not investment advice.