Coin Velocity
Trailing-window Coin Days Destroyed divided by circulating supply. Raw CDD spikes look dramatic on a log axis but they're hard to compare across eras with very different supply levels. Dividing by supply normalises the metric: a velocity of 90 means the trailing 90-day window destroyed an entire supply's worth of coin-days, on average.
Velocity over time
Solid line: 90-day rolling window. Dashed line: 365-day window for the slower-moving trend. Both are computed from the same daily CDD aggregation; the difference is window size. Supply is derived from cumulative coinbase subsidy (deterministic, doesn't account for provably-lost coins).
Why velocity matters
Raw CDD answers "how much did old coins move today?" but it doesn't account for supply growth. A 1M BTC·day destruction in 2012 (when supply was ~10M BTC) meant something very different than the same number in 2026 (when supply is ~19.8M BTC). Dividing by supply gives you a comparable number across all eras: how active are old coins relative to the size of the network.
Sustained low velocity tells you holders are sitting tight. Sustained high velocity tells you long-time holders are repositioning. Sharp single-day spikes are usually identifiable events: exchange consolidations, government forfeiture sales, post-bankruptcy distributions. Cycle tops historically show up as multi-month elevated readings before the spot price actually peaks.
Coming soon
Coin Velocity Signal
CDD fires on single events. Velocity tracks the regime. Sustained elevated 90-day velocity has preceded every major cycle top by one to three months — the kind of slow, structural signal hedge funds pay six figures a year for. Built on the same envelope as Fee Pressure and CDD.
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Regime classifier. Every new block
scores into
Dormant / Accumulating / Distributing / Capitulationbands from the 90-day velocity vs. its multi-cycle baseline. Trade the regime, not the day. - 90d × 365d crossover detection. The divergence is itself a signal — early distribution surfaces in the 90-day window before the 365-day follows. Webhook fires on the cross.
- 16 years of real chain history. Backtest your thresholds against the full cycle record from our own chronological-walk backfill. Most providers' velocity series start in 2017 or later.
GET https://signals.chainquery.com/v1/signals/coin-velocity — coming soon, bearer-gated.
Bundles with Fee Pressure + CDD as the ChainQuery Signal Suite. Early access: [email protected].
Methodology
- Numerator: sum of
cdd_btc_daysover the trailing window (90 or 365 days). - Denominator: cumulative coinbase subsidy at the end of the day's last block, in BTC. Reads
from
block_revenue_snapshots; doesn't subtract provably-lost coins, so the absolute denominator runs ~1-2M BTC higher than "true" circulating supply. The ratio's shape is preserved since the offset is small and slow-moving. - The 90- and 365-day series begin once the data has at least that many days of coverage; early backfill days show no value.