SOPR (Spent Output Profit Ratio)

Every time a coin moves on-chain, SOPR compares the price it's moving at today to the price it last moved at (its cost basis), for every output spent that day:

A reading above 1 means the average coin spent that day was sold at a profit; below 1 means it was sold at a loss.

Unlike MVRV or NUPL, which value the entire circulating supply, SOPR only looks at coins that actually moved that day — it's a measure of realized behavior, not unrealized position.

Suppose the coins spent today were last acquired at a combined cost basis of $500 million, and at today's price those same coins are worth $525 million. Then:

A SOPR of 1.05 means today's sellers realized, on average, a 5% gain over what they paid — consistent with a healthy uptrend. If instead those coins were worth only $480M today, SOPR would print 0.96: sellers taking a ~4% loss, the kind of loss-realization that clusters during capitulation.

In a healthy uptrend, SOPR tends to hold above 1 and use the 1.0 line as support — dips toward 1 get bought before turning negative. A confirmed break below 1 that fails to recover has historically marked a shift from an uptrend into distribution or a bear phase.

In a downtrend, the reverse holds: SOPR tends to reject at 1.0 from below, since holders who are barely break-even sell into any bounce rather than let a small gain turn back into a loss. A sustained break above 1 that holds has historically signaled the start of a new uptrend.

SOPR's edge is that it captures realized behavior — what holders are actually doing, not just what they could do on paper. That makes it a natural confirmation layer on top of a slow valuation gauge: when MVRV Z-Score says valuation is stretched, a SOPR that starts losing the 1.0 line is early evidence the profit is beginning to be taken. Always read it smoothed (a moving average, or the aSOPR variant), never a single raw daily print.

Realized-behavior signals like SOPR complement the cost-basis valuation metrics in the on-chain & valuation family the Risk Model weighs most heavily. The model reads them together with cycle, momentum, and sentiment families so a single noisy metric can't swing the score. See the published category weights on the Methodology page.

Raw SOPR is noisy day-to-day and is usually smoothed with a moving average before it's useful. It also doesn't distinguish long-term holders from short-term traders — a variant called aSOPR (adjusted SOPR) filters out coins that moved within the same hour to reduce noise from exchange-internal transfers, and is generally considered the more reliable version. Like all cost-basis metrics, it treats an on-chain move as a "sale" even when it is really a transfer, which can distort short-term readings.