Crypto glossary
Realized capitalization
Realized capitalization values each coin at the price when it last moved on-chain, giving an estimate of the total cost basis of a network's holders.
Market capitalization multiplies every coin by today's price, including coins untouched for a decade or lost forever. Realized cap, introduced by Coinmetrics researchers in 2018, instead prices each unspent output at the value it had when it was last transacted, then adds them up. The result approximates how much money holders collectively paid for their coins.
Because it changes only when coins move, realized cap is far less volatile than market cap and rises when coins change hands at higher prices, a sign of fresh capital entering. It is the foundation of other on-chain metrics such as MVRV, NUPL and the realized price, which is realized cap divided by supply.
It is easiest to calculate for UTXO chains like Bitcoin and harder for account-based chains. Internal transfers between an investor's own wallets or an exchange's cold storage can reset a coin's cost basis without any real trade, and analytics providers apply different filters, so values vary slightly by source.
Example
If one bitcoin last moved when the price was 20,000 dollars and another at 60,000, realized cap counts them at those prices rather than both at today's price.