98% of Unspent Bitcoin Transactions Could Sell for Profit: Report

A quirky metric from Glassnode is the latest to remind us that Bitcoin’s price has risen.

2 min read

Oct 22, 2020

Here’s another metric that describes Bitcoin’s recent success, per analytics site Glassnode: “98% of all unspent Bitcoin transactions (UTXOs) are currently in a state of profit.”

“A level not seen since Dec 2017, and typical in previous $BTC bull markets,” said Glassnode in its tweet. What’s this mean? Is this Good For Bitcoin? Number go up? (Hasn’t it gone up enough?)

What this metric describes is that all of the Bitcoin sitting in wallets right now would sell for a profit when compared to the value of that Bitcoin when it entered those wallets.

Kinda. An unspent transaction, or UTXO, refers to Bitcoin that one has a right to sell. If you sent Decrypt a Bitcoin, Decrypt would receive the right to one Bitcoin transaction, which until we move the coin is unspent (hence the name).

If Decrypt then donated 0.5 of our Bitcoin to Joseph Lubin (whose company, ConsenSys, contributes funds to this editorially independent publication), he would receive one unspent transaction and our remaining half of a Bitcoin would turn into another unspent transaction. And so on.

Glassnode’s metric is a roundabout way of making the point that most of the money sitting around in Bitcoin wallets could be sold for a profit.

Its tweet today is the latest to show that Bitcoin is performing well at the moment. It hit just over $13,000 this week, a record unmatched since the end of last June. And all for a coin that was toying with the $4,000 mark in March! Where’s the Glassnode chart that expresses Decrypt’s surprise?

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.

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