Bitcoin holders have sold at a profit for three straight weeks, the longest streak of 2026, and so far the market is absorbing every coin without flinching. The measure telling that story is the entity-adjusted Spent Output Profit Ratio, or SOPR, which has sat above 1.0 since August 19, according to Crypto Briefing.
Every tick above that line means the average coin moving on-chain is being sold for more than it cost its previous owner. Below it, people sell at a loss. Bitcoin is trading near $81,119, with the standard SOPR holding at roughly 1.008.
That is a thin margin, less than a cent of average profit per dollar of coins moved. But it is a margin the market has now defended for weeks, and earlier this year every attempt to hold above 1.0 was knocked back quickly once sellers overwhelmed buyers.
The above-1.0 run began on August 19
The streak started on August 19, and the date matters. Every earlier attempt in 2026 to sustain profitability above breakeven failed within days, with sellers dragging the metric back under the line. The shape of the streak is as telling as its length.
The highest reading during the whole run was 1.002, per CryptoQuant. A single violent spike can be noise, a panic burst or a one-off blow-off. Steady, modest numbers suggest holders are taking profits in an orderly way while fresh demand keeps arriving to meet them.
Glassnode's adjusted version filters out the housekeeping
The raw SOPR and the entity-adjusted version can disagree, because the raw number counts everything. The adjusted measure, built by Glassnode, strips out internal wallet shuffles and exchange-to-exchange moves, the back-office traffic that is not a real sale. What is left is actual economic activity, genuine trades between real parties.
On that cleaner signal, both sides of the market are in the green. Long-term and short-term holder SOPR each sat above 1.0 in September, per the on-chain data, so neither group is underwater on aggregate.
That is notable because in a downturn the short-term cohort is usually the loser, having bought recently at higher prices and sold into the slide.
Puell wants three months before calling a shift
David Puell at ARK Invest reads the same numbers with a dose of patience. He thinks the metrics look promising but that a definitive market regime shift needs further confirmation, and he puts a rough value on that patience: three weeks of profitability is encouraging, and three months would be convincing.
There is a reason for the hesitation. On-chain profitability tells you what people paid and what they sold for, but it does not say why. Profit-taking can be the opening phase of a new uptrend, and it can also be the quiet exit before a slowdown.
The metric alone cannot separate the two.
If SOPR dips back below 1.0, the average coin being moved changes hands at a loss, and sustained readings under breakeven have historically lined up with capitulation events and long downtrends. The current 1.008 leaves a thin buffer above that danger zone.
The next reading is due within a week, and the line to watch is 1.0. A fourth week above it would extend a streak that no 2026 reading has managed all year. A drop below it flips the story, and sellers will be the ones outlasting buyers.
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