Holder Regime Ladder
Where the market stands, read as the position of spot price against what each holder population paid. Ten named phases are folded into four rungs. There is no neutral rung: the reading always takes a side.
What is it?
Three coin populations each carry an average acquisition cost: all circulating coins, those held recently, those held for a long time. The day's classification depends on where price sits relative to these three references, on their order among themselves, and on the one-year moving average that arbitrates when the first three do not settle the matter. Ten named configurations are distinguished this way, then folded into four rungs, from minus two to plus two. The folding keeps the meaning and drops the nuance: two different configurations can land on the same rung. There is no zero rung, and that absence is deliberate: as soon as the three acquisition costs exist, price necessarily sits somewhere relative to them. The reading therefore always takes a side.
How to read
The ladder is read against price, which is why the price overlay is on from the moment the chart opens. The rung alone says where the market stands; it is the confrontation with price that tells whether the regime accompanies the move or contradicts it. The boundary is not a zero line since none exists: it runs between minus one and plus one, and crossing it means price has just changed sides relative to at least one of the slow references. A rung at plus two describes price above the acquisition costs and a structure where recent buyers paid more than older ones; at minus two the configuration is reversed and the slow references sit above price. The two intermediate rungs describe partial states, where only some of the conditions are met.
Key zones
Four rungs only, and they do not carry equal frequency. Over the available history the top rung occupies close to half the days and the bottom rung a little over a quarter: the ladder spends most of its time at its ends, and the two intermediate rungs together account for only a quarter of the calendar. That distribution says something about the measure itself: partial states are passages, rarely stays. A regime lasts two to three weeks on average before changing, but that average covers stays of several months and round trips of a few days.
What to observe
Watch how long a regime lasts rather than the fact of having entered it. A prolonged stay on the top rung means the three populations remain in profit and the hierarchy of their costs does not invert; a prolonged stay on the bottom rung means the opposite, and the depth of a bear market reads in that duration far more than in price. Then watch rapid round trips around the boundary: they indicate price oscillating around an acquisition cost, meaning an entire population alternates between latent profit and loss. Finally watch divergences with price: price rising while the rung falls, or the reverse, means the move is not accompanied by a change in the cost structure, and that disagreement is usually more instructive than agreement.
Historical context
The reading begins in the early 2010s, as soon as the three acquisition costs carry enough coins to be compared. That early start was verified rather than assumed: the average duration of a regime during the first full year is almost identical to the figure measured across the whole history, which rules out an unstable ramp-up that would have needed trimming. The chart therefore spans several complete cycles, and the same rung there describes markets whose prices bear no comparison: that is precisely the point of a regime scale, which brings incomparable eras onto a single reading grid.
Expert notes
Two methodological remarks. The first concerns the folding: ten configurations become four rungs, and the information lost is not trivial. Two very different markets, one where price has just fallen below the short reference alone and another where it sits below all three, can occupy the same bottom rung. The ladder indicates a regime, it does not grade an intensity, and the measure of depth must be sought elsewhere. The second concerns what this reading does not do: it describes a present state from quantities already formed, anticipating nothing. A neighbouring model published upstream derives positioning indications from these same phases; they are deliberately neither taken up nor computed here, because they belong to recommendation rather than measurement.
Common mistakes to avoid
The first mistake is to look for a neutral level and be surprised not to find one. The absence of a zero rung is not a gap: the classification assumes the three acquisition costs exist, and as soon as they do, price sits somewhere. The second mistake is to read the ladder as a forecast. A high rung describes a favourable cost structure at the moment of observation, says nothing about how long it will last, and the history shows stays of a few days as well as several months. The third mistake is to compare rung height to price amplitude. The rung moves only in whole steps while price varies continuously: the same move from minus one to plus one can accompany a minimal rise as easily as a major reversal.
Programmatic access
REST API
curl -sS \
'https://api.trinityinsights.io/api/v1/onchain/metrics/holder-regime-ladder/data?timeframe=90d' \
-H 'X-API-Key: $TRINITY_API_KEY'MCP server
{
"tool": "get_chart_value",
"metric_id": "holder-regime-ladder",
"timeframe": "1y"
}Required tier: pro. See the pricing grid for the tier list and the MCP documentation for multi-client configuration.
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Institutional disclaimer
Trinity Insights is an educational and analytical tool. The metric above does not constitute investment advice. Trinity Insights is not a Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) registered under MiCA Regulation (EU) 2023/1114. See the full disclaimer.