Supply Floor by Cohort
The acquisition floor split between long-term and short-term holders. The short-term floor tracks the live pain threshold of recent buyers, the long-term floor the structural base built by holders who sat through previous cycles. The gap between the two widens in late expansion and compresses after capitulation.
What is it?
The same floor calculation as the envelope chart, applied separately to two populations. Long-term holders are the coins that have sat still long enough to have lived through market conditions different from the present ones. Short-term holders are recently acquired coins. One level is drawn per population, its acquisition floor, plus spot price for reference. The reading lies in the gap between the three: the long-term base, the short-term one, and that of the whole supply.
How to read
The short-term floor sits structurally higher than the long-term one, since recent coins were acquired at prices closer to the current market. That difference is what carries the information. The short-term floor measures the pain threshold of recent buyers: when price moves below it, they are the ones holding at a loss, and history shows this population sells more readily than the other. The long-term floor describes a structural base, built by holders whose behaviour has demonstrated lower sensitivity to price swings.
Key zones
The gap between the two floors is the primary reading. A wide gap points to a market where recent buyers entered well above the structural base, the configuration of advanced expansion phases. A tight gap points to both populations sharing a nearby cost base, which happens after capitulations, once the most fragile positions have changed hands. Price moving below the short-term floor and, more rarely, below the long-term floor, marks increasing degrees of stress.
What to observe
Watch crossings and compressions rather than absolute levels. Watch how the short-term floor reacts after a marked decline: a fast fall indicates coins acquired high having changed hands low, so capitulation under way rather than ahead. Finally watch the stability of the long-term floor, whose steady progression points to a strengthening holding base, and whose decline, rarer, indicates that even old holders have sold.
Historical context
Across the cycles covered by the available history, compression between the two floors occurred in the months following capitulation phases, while the maximum gap was observed in advanced expansion phases. Price moved below the short-term floor on many occasions, including during ordinary corrections. Moves below the deepest long-term floor are markedly rarer and cluster in late bear markets.
Expert notes
The boundary between the two populations rests on a conventional holding duration, chosen by the industry rather than derived from a property of the protocol. A coin does not change nature on the day it crosses that threshold: the transition is gradual in reality, discrete in the measure. It should also be kept in mind that a transfer between wallets of the same holder resets the coin's age and moves it into the short-term population, which introduces permanent background noise, more visible on the short-term floor than on the other.
Common mistakes to avoid
First mistake, treating the long-term floor as an unbreakable level. It has been broken, and its apparent solidity comes from its rarity, not from a guarantee. Second mistake, reading a rise in the short-term floor as a sign of strength: it simply reflects recent acquisitions at higher prices, which increases market fragility in a pullback. Third mistake, forgetting that the two populations differ in size, and that a floor computed on a smaller population moves more than the other.
Programmatic access
REST API
curl -sS \
'https://api.trinityinsights.io/api/v1/onchain/supply-floor-by-cohort/history?days=90' \
-H 'X-API-Key: $TRINITY_API_KEY'MCP server
{
"tool": "get_chart_value",
"metric_id": "supply-floor-by-cohort",
"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.