Unit 2 · Level 3 · On-chain valuation
HODL waves
Every coin has an age: the time since it last moved. Sort all supply into age bands (under 1 month, 1-6 months, 1-2 years, 5+ years) and you get HODL waves, a layered chart like rings in a tree trunk. Old bands are conviction: coins that sat through crashes without moving. Young bands are hot money. Watching the bands swell and shrink shows conviction building or breaking across the whole market.
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What you get asked
What does a coin's 'age' mean in HODL wave analysis?
Age resets to zero on every move. A coin mined in 2010 that moved yesterday is one day old: the metric tracks holding behaviour, not birthdays.
Match each HODL wave pattern to its classic reading
Bear markets age the supply as holders sit tight; bull peaks youth-ify it as old coins sell to newcomers. The waves paint the cycle in age.
When coins dormant for 5+ years suddenly move during a rally, analysts suspect long-term holders are ___ into strength.
Ancient coins rarely wake up to do nothing. Movement of very old supply into rising prices is one of the cleaner distribution tells on-chain.
Why are the oldest age bands read as a 'conviction map'?
Every day a coin doesn't move is a decision not to sell. Years of such decisions, through 50%+ drawdowns, is conviction you can measure.
What's the honest caveat when reading old-coin movements?
A whale rotating to a fresh hardware wallet looks identical to a whale depositing to sell, until you check the destination. Movement is a question, not an answer. 🐜
The rest of this unit
The blockchain remembers what everyone paid. Turn that memory into valuation gauges.