The VDD Multiple (Value Days Destroyed Multiple) weighs how much stored coin value has recently been spent against what this market normally spends, which leaves a proportion instead of a tally. Proportions travel across eras in a way tallies never can.

Raw destruction figures grow with the network. They rise with price, with supply and with the sheer age of coins in existence, so a large number in a later cycle can describe less unusual behaviour than a small one did years earlier. Expressing it as a multiple of its own baseline strips that growth out.

What it actually measures

The metric compares how much aged value has been moving lately with how much has been moving over a much longer stretch. When the recent figure runs ahead of the longer one, the multiple sits above its balance point and older coins are moving more than has been usual for this market.

Sustained readings well above that balance have coincided with distribution phases, when patient supply is handed to newer buyers. Readings below it describe the opposite condition, in which aged supply is sitting still and whatever trading is happening is being done by recent coins.

The baseline is made of the metric’s own past

The comparison is self-referencing. The longer baseline is built from the same series, so a genuine wave of destruction does not only lift the top of the ratio, it also lifts the bottom of it. Some months after a large event, the baseline has absorbed that event and the multiple falls back even though destruction has not.

In practice the metric quietly forgives a regime it has already seen. A long, steady distribution phase reads as dramatic at its start and ordinary by its middle, not because behaviour changed but because the yardstick moved. Check the raw destruction series alongside it before concluding that a phase has ended.

What it does not tell you

It does not identify who moved the coins or why. A holder taking profit and a custodian reorganising cold storage destroy the same value, and the multiple records both identically. Large prints are worth investigating at the transaction level before they are treated as market decisions.

It also cannot flag an extreme in absolute terms. Because everything is expressed relative to recent history, a market in which destruction has been persistently high for a long period will show an unremarkable multiple. Comparability across eras is what the ratio is for, and blindness to level is what it costs.

How to read it

Elevated. The multiple is high against its full history. Aged value is being destroyed faster than this market’s own norm, which is the footprint of distribution.

Mid-range. Sitting where it usually sits. Scenery rather than an instruction.

Subdued. Low against everything on record. Old coins are staying put, which is where accumulation phases have generally lived.

The VDD Multiple sits on the Dormancy dashboard beside Coin Days Destroyed, Binary CDD and Supply-Adjusted CDD.

Common questions

Why use a multiple instead of the raw figure?

Because the underlying tally swells as the network does, behaviour or no behaviour. Weighing the recent against the usual leaves something that carries the same meaning whichever decade you read it in.

What does a reading above the balance point describe?

More stored value being spent than this market normally spends, so the old coins are unusually busy. Long spells up there have kept company with distribution phases.

Does a spike mean holders are selling?

Not by itself. The metric sees value moving, not ownership changing. Exchange consolidations and custody migrations produce the same print as genuine profit-taking.

Why does it fall while destruction stays high?

Because the baseline catches up. A sustained phase eventually becomes the norm the ratio is measured against, so the multiple can decline while the underlying behaviour continues.

What should be read beside it?

Binary CDD, which counts days rather than size and so answers whether the behaviour is persistent, and the raw destruction series, which keeps the absolute level in view.