Supply by Vintage Year files each coin under the calendar year it last shifted, which reveals which crop of buyers is still sitting tight and which has passed everything along. The figures underneath are the same ones an age chart uses, arranged instead around markers most readers already have feelings about.

That anchor is the whole reason for the view. An abstract age band is a number, and a year is a memory of what the market was doing, which makes the same fact considerably easier to interpret.

What it actually measures

A coin is filed under whenever it last shifted, and nothing else. Where one year bulges, an outsized quantity of coin traded then and has not budged since, and groups like that generally came in around similar prices.

Sharing a cost basis is what makes a vintage behave as a group. A cohort that all acquired around the same level will tend to react to the same price, which is how supply arrives in waves rather than steadily.

Read across the whole set, the shape says whether the float is dominated by recent cost bases or by old ones. A structurally illiquid base is one where coins that last moved years ago account for most of the supply.

Old vintages can only shrink, and the newest can only grow

A coin’s vintage changes the instant it moves. It leaves whatever band it was in and joins the current one, which means an old vintage has exactly one available direction and the current year has the other.

That drift is baked into how the chart is built and carries no message from the market at all. Whichever year is running swells throughout by helping itself to coin from its predecessors, then sets solid the instant the year is out. Treating the newest band’s growth as appetite confuses the plumbing with the news.

Vintage Map: the deep bands are a record, not a target

Every band gathers the coins still carrying a purchase price from its era. Those at the fresh end came in lately at lately’s prices, and those furthest down came in long ago at whatever the market happened to be charging.

Ancient bands sit a long way under the market for the simple reason that they were bought when things were cheaper. Anything that last traded years back keeps its era’s price no matter how far the market has since climbed, and the resulting distance implies nothing whatever about the market returning there.

This is worth stating because the shape invites the opposite reading. A chart with heavy supply well beneath the current price looks like a magnet, and it is easily the exact reverse: those levels are where the market has already been, held by people who have watched it leave and chosen to stay.

What it does not tell you

The calendar boundary is arbitrary. A cohort that accumulated across a year end is split into two vintages that look independent and behaved as one, and nothing in the chart reunites them.

It also cannot distinguish a sale from any other movement. Coins leaving an old vintage have moved, and custody migrations empty a vintage exactly as distribution does.

And a vintage is not a group of people. The coins that last moved in a given period were moved by different holders for different reasons, and treating a band as a cohort with a shared intention reads more into it than the data supports.

How to read it

Deep Dormancy. Most of the coin last shifted years back, which leaves very little of it genuinely available.

Balanced Vintages. No single era dominates the supply base.

Active Redistribution. Most of the coin has traded lately, so recent purchase prices now dominate what is available.

Supply by Vintage Year updates on the Supply dashboard, and so do Vintage Map, The Age Pyramid and HODL Waves.

Common questions

Why sort by calendar year at all?

Because most readers already have feelings about particular years. Learning that a considerable amount of coin last shifted during one memorable stretch lands in a way an anonymous age band never will.

What does one bulging year signify?

That an outsized quantity of coin traded then and has not budged since. Groups like that generally came in around similar prices, so one level can move all of them at once.

Does a coin’s vintage change?

Yes, the instant it shifts. It abandons its old year and is refiled under the current one, which is why the older years can only ever get smaller.

Why does the newest band only ever grow?

Because everything that shifts ends up there. It swells throughout by helping itself to coin from its predecessors, then sets solid once the period is out.

Is a vintage a group of people?

No. The coins that last moved in a period were moved by different holders for different reasons, and a band is not a cohort with a shared intention.

What am I looking at?

A single moment carved up by seniority. Each band holds whatever last traded within its age range, positioned at what that coin cost. Nothing here runs through time.

Why are the ancient bands so far under the market?

Because they paid old prices. They are a record of where the market has been, not a prediction of where it is going.