Methodology

The signature — the price-decomposition waterfall

Every price on this site is decomposed into a waterfall: the part anchored to value we can measure today — the measured anchor — and the future expectations priced on top. The headline is the measured anchor as a share of price. It is a descriptive coordinate, not a judgment that a price is too high or too low.

1. The question

Is this price grounded, or a dream? We decompose every price in the language of finance: P = C + E/r + premium. We borrow this from Ohlson's residual-income identity as a conceptual frame — the structure, not a strict accounting mapping. C is an exogenous, holder-attributable floor. E/r is realized cash flow, capitalized. The premium is what remains.

2. The spine, and what we measure

The organizing principle is anchoring distance: how independent each part of a price is from the token's own price. We order a price from its most exogenously anchored part to its least.

• Measured anchors — exogenous, holder-attributable, and measurable today: a floor (C) where one exists, and realized cash flow (E/r).
• The residual — price minus measured anchors — is the market's future expectations: adoption, growth, network value.

We read the residual but we do not draw a line through it. We report the perpetual growth rate the price implies, but we do not split the residual into "justified" and "unjustified" — that would require us to choose what counts as justified, and we don't. Each asset uses only the subset of anchors it has exogenous grounds for; the number of measured blocks is the number of genuinely distinct exogenous anchors, not a number we pick.

3. C, precisely — and why proof-of-stake has no floor

C is not balance-sheet book value. It is an exogenous, holder-attributable floor, and its content differs by asset.

Proof-of-work (BTC): production cost. Miners spend exogenous resources — energy and hardware, priced in dollars. Below that cost, mining economics break. This is a supply-side cost floor.

Proof-of-stake (ETH, SOL, AVAX): C ≈ 0 — structurally. We tested whether a real floor exists for these assets — an exogenous, holder-attributable value beneath the price. We looked at foundation reserves, on-chain redemption, protocol-owned liquidity, validator costs, and staking yield. The foundations do hold non-native reserves — the Ethereum Foundation reported about $181.5M in non-crypto assets (October 2024 disclosure) — but under their legal structure the native token confers no claim on those assets to holders. That value, like any other expectation, sits in the residual, not in a floor. Staked "capital at risk" is denominated in the token itself, so it is circular, not exogenous. Validator hardware is exogenous but borne by validators, not holders, and is immaterial against market cap. We found nothing both non-native and holder-attributable. So C ≈ 0 — not because we couldn't measure it, but because proof-of-stake replaced proof-of-work's exogenous energy cost with an internal capital lock-up. (A node would not change this: a node completes the measurement of the flow, E; the net-issuance stock is still token-denominated and fails the same exogeneity test.) Their price rests on flow and expectation, with no production-cost floor beneath it.

4. Kinds of numbers (epistemic states)

Not every number on this site is the same kind of number, and we mark the difference — in labels and visually.

• Measured — computed from exogenous, on-chain or disclosed data (production cost, realized fee burn).
• Implied / read — read off the price itself (the implied growth rate). This reflects what the market prices, not a measurement of the asset.
• Residual — price minus measured anchors, shown bare and named as residual. We never dress the residual as a measured block.

5. What we say, and what we don't

• We state observations — coordinates, positions, what the market implies. We do not state judgments: we never call an asset cheap, expensive, a bubble, or fairly valued, and we never give a target price or a buy/sell call.
• We report what the market implies; we do not say it is justified. "The price implies W% perpetual growth" is an observation. "Therefore it is worth X" is a judgment we don't make.
• Macro is a lens, not a verdict (see §7).
• Whether the future expectations in any price are reasonable or excessive is the reader's call. We give the coordinates; the reader — and those who cite us — supply the conclusion.

6. Reading the shape

The same ruler produces different shapes for different assets, and the difference is the point.

• BTC: most of the price sits above a production-cost floor — a capital asset.
• ETH / SOL / AVAX: almost the entire price is future expectation — growth assets.

A low measured anchor is not a verdict that an asset "should fall." It is a diagnosis of what kind of asset it is — one priced on a floor, or one priced on the future. What that means is for the reader to judge.

7. Data, coverage, and the role of macro

Every source is no-signup, no-API-key, no-node. Price comes from exchange public tickers (Kraken) and on-chain DEX trades (DexScreener); supply is self-read where a chain exposes it (Bitcoin via mempool.space, Solana and Avalanche via their public RPCs) and N/A where it does not; the holder cash flow (E) is the on-chain base-fee burn. Macro — rates, CPI, M2 — comes from the US Treasury, US BLS, the Federal Reserve (H.6), and the World Bank. Every figure carries a source and an as-of date; node-only metrics (total gas revenue, realized cap, MVRV) are N/A, not estimated.

Macro as the r lens. Macro data enters the model in exactly one way: as the discount rate r (r = the risk-free 10-year yield plus a public crypto premium). r sizes the measured anchor (E/r): a lower r enlarges the measured floor and shrinks the residual; a higher r does the reverse. This is a mechanical identity within the model — not a causal claim that macro drives price, and not a basis that justifies the expectations in the residual. We display the macro environment as context. We do not use it to justify or predict any asset. The connection runs one way only: macro → r → the ratio of measured anchor to future expectation.

This page explains how the figures are produced. It is information, not investment advice. See the Disclaimer.