A single on-chain indicator has quietly called the bottom of every major Bitcoin cycle for the past decade, and it’s now getting closer that important level again.
The setup comes from a monthly Bitcoin chart combined with the NUPL indicator, which tracks whether the average holder is sitting on unrealized gains or losses. In each of the last three major bear market lows, the indicator fell into the same area and hit an ascending trend line.
Nailing the Bitcoin Bottom
Bitcoin’s latest break above $70,000 and into the mid-$70,000s has occurred saw a bullish mood slowly return. The fear and greed index has improved, but one question is still unresolved. Has the market already found its bottom, or is there another washout in the offing? Interestingly, a long-term analysis of the Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL) shows that the answer may lie in a pattern that has repeated itself across multiple market cycles.
Related reading
NUPL is a pure sentiment meter in Bitcoin analysis because it reduces price action to whether holders are making profits or hurting on average. When the value is high, the market is sitting on large unrealized gains. When the going gets tough, those gains disappear and losses dominate.
The monthly candlestick chart shows that Bitcoin’s major cycle lows have consistently formed when the NUPL moves into deep territory and marks an ascending long-term support line. That happened at the 2015 cycle bottom, repeated again at the bear market bottom in 2018, and emerged again around the 2022 bottom. Each of these touches came at points where sentiment had already been crushed and the Bitcoin price had lost most of its previous gains.
The current NUPL value of 22.9 represents a cryptocurrency that is still posting modest overall gains, although it has lost much of the gains investors collected during the rally to the October 2025 peak above $126,000.
Has the bottom already been reached?
According to to a crypto analyst which goes by the name CrypFlow on the social media platform If this pattern holds, Bitcoin may need another deeper sentiment reset before the market reaches a true long-term washout.
The price may have already corrected a lot, but the indicator is showing the emotional capitulation we saw at previous bottoms may not yet be complete. The NUPL could continue to move lower and reach the trendline before a bottom is confirmed.
Related literature: Analyst Says Bitcoin Bulls Have Won and This Is the Next Target
While no indicator can pinpoint every bottom with perfect precision, the NUPL leaves room for the possibility that one last price crash could occur before the next full cycle expansion begins. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $74,220, up 1.3% in the past 24 hours.
Featured image of Pngtree, chart from Tradingview.com