Realized Cap measures the aggregate value of a crypto asset's supply by pricing each coin at the value it was last moved on-chain - rather than applying the current market price uniformly across all coins. By summing each output at its last transaction price, Realized Cap captures what the market collectively paid for its current holdings, making it a more economically grounded measure of network value than market cap alone.
Unlike Market Cap, Realized Cap discounts coins that have remained dormant for extended periods - including lost coins, unclaimed rewards, and supply rendered inaccessible through wallet failures or protocol bugs - effectively removing economically inactive supply from the valuation. This makes it a closer approximation of the actual stored economic value in the network, functioning as an on-chain equivalent of volume-weighted average price (VWAP) applied across the entire supply history.
When Market Cap falls below Realized Cap, the average holder is underwater relative to their cost basis - a historically rare condition that has marked major cycle bottoms and high-conviction accumulation zones. The relationship between the two metrics forms the basis of the MVRV Ratio, one of the most widely used on-chain valuation frameworks for identifying overextended and undervalued market conditions across cycles.
