Bitcoin Cycle Inflows Hit $678 Billion: How Do Past Cycles Compare?

On-chain data shows Bitcoin inflows this cycle have totaled to $678 billion. Here’s how this figure compares with that of the previous cycles.

Bitcoin Realized Cap Growth Has Been 1.8x Larger Than Last Cycle

In its latest weekly report, on-chain analytics firm Glassnode has discussed about the growth in the Realized Cap of Bitcoin. This capitalization model calculates BTC’s total value by assuming that the value of each token in circulation is equal to the price at which it was last transacted on the blockchain.

The last transaction of any token is likely to correspond to the last time at which it changed hands, so the price at its time could be considered as its current cost basis. As such, the Realized Cap is essentially the sum of the cost basis of the entire BTC circulating supply.

In other words, the model represents the total amount of capital that the investors used to purchase their Bitcoin. This is in contrast to the usual market cap, which is instead the value that holders are carrying in the present.

In the current cycle so far (starting in November 2022), the Realized Cap has jumped in three big waves, suggesting a large amount of capital has flowed into BTC through three phases. Following the latest inflows, the indicator has risen to a record $1.06 trillion, as the below chart shows.

But how much of the capital stored in Bitcoin came in during the latest cycle alone? Another chart shared by Glassnode in the report breaks it down for not just this cycle, but also all past ones.

In total, an unprecedented $678 billion in capital inflows have come into Bitcoin during the latest cycle. This is 1.8 times the $383 billion in Realized Cap growth that the 2018 to 2022 cycle witnessed. The last cycle saw a more exponential jump from the previous ones ($4.2 billion from 2011 to 2015, and $85 billion from 2015 to 2018), but the sheer scale of capital involved in the latest cycle is still quite impressive.

Besides the rise in the Realized Cap, another metric that the current cycle stands out in is the Realized Profit/Loss Ratio. This indicator measures, as its name implies, the ratio between the amount of BTC being shifted at a profit and that at a loss.

As is visible in the above chart, the Bitcoin Profit/Loss Ratio has seen three peaks with extreme values in this cycle, which is unlike the single prolonged waves from the previous cycles. “Having just stepped away from the third such extreme, probabilities favour a cooling phase ahead,” explains the analytics firm.

BTC Price

Bitcoin has seen its drawdown deepen over the past day as its price has dropped to the $109,300 level.