Exchange Reserve

What it measures

Total BTC currently sitting in known exchange-controlled wallets - a running balance, not a daily flow.

Formula

A cumulative running total, tracked directly by Coin Metrics rather than derived from flows in this dashboard.

Normal range

Has trended structurally downward for years across the whole market as self-custody has grown - the multi-year trend matters more than any single level.

How it fails

"Known" exchange wallets is doing real work in that definition - a reserve figure can only count wallets that have actually been identified as belonging to an exchange, so it understates true exchange-held supply by construction, and that undercount can itself change over time as labeling improves.

Related metrics

Net Exchange Flow

Bull read

A falling reserve alongside a rising or flat price is the classic supply-squeeze pattern some traders watch for.

Bear read

A falling reserve is not proof of a shortage - it can also reflect exchanges themselves changing custody arrangements, unrelated to end-user demand.