Observation Deck / Blockwatch

About the Metrics

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Plain-English explanations for everything on the dashboard — what each number measures, where it comes from, and why it matters.

Market

Price (USD) CoinGecko

The latest USD spot price of one bitcoin, averaged across the major exchanges CoinGecko tracks. The 24-hour change underneath shows how price has moved since this time yesterday.

Why it matters: the headline number — though arguably the least informative one on this page once you understand the others.
Market Cap CoinGecko

Price × circulating supply. With ~19.8M BTC in circulation, market cap is roughly 19.8M × current price. The "Rank" tag shows where Bitcoin sits among all crypto assets by market cap (it has held #1 since inception).

Why it matters: it's the standard comparison metric across crypto and is often used to compare BTC's "size" to publicly traded companies, gold, or M2 money supply.
24h Volume CoinGecko

Total USD-equivalent volume traded across exchanges over the last 24 hours.

Why it matters: volume tells you how active the market is. Rising price on rising volume is a stronger signal than the same price move on thin volume.
All-Time High CoinGecko

The highest price BTC has ever traded at. The percentage shows how far the current price is from that peak (negative means below).

Why it matters: a quick gauge of whether the market is in price discovery (near or above ATH) or in a drawdown.

Bitcoin vs. Gold

Gold Price CoinGecko · pax-gold

Spot price of gold per troy ounce, sourced via PAX Gold (PAXG) — a 1:1 physically-backed gold token that tracks spot gold within a few basis points. Standard keyless way to pull a gold price client-side without an API key. The 24-hour change shows how the metal has moved since this time yesterday.

Why it matters: the data anchor of the section. Every other number on these four cards is derived from this one.
Gold Market Cap Computed

Gold price × ~6.835 billion troy ounces of above-ground gold. The supply estimate comes from the World Gold Council (~212,582 tonnes × 32,150.7 troy oz/tonne) and updates slowly enough that a fixed constant works fine. As of 2026, this number is in the $25–30 trillion range.

Why it matters: gold is the historical "monetary asset" benchmark. Its market cap is the standard measuring stick for any new contender — including Bitcoin.
BTC at Gold Parity Computed

The BTC price required for Bitcoin's market cap to match gold's, holding both supplies constant. Calculated as `gold market cap ÷ circulating BTC supply`.

Why it matters: the Bitcoin-as-digital-gold thesis, expressed as a single price target. Whether you find the thesis compelling or not, this is the number that thesis implies.
Multiple of Current Price Computed

How many times higher BTC's current price would need to be to match gold's market cap. Computed as `parity price ÷ current BTC price`. Mirrors the same metric in the debt section, just anchored to gold's market cap instead of US debt.

Why it matters: single-number summary of the BTC-vs-gold gap. The number shrinks every BTC bull run and grows every drawdown — track it month-over-month to see whether digital gold is catching up to physical gold.

Bitcoin vs. US Debt

$1T Pace TreasuryDirect

How many days, on average, the US currently takes to add another trillion dollars of debt. Computed by querying TreasuryDirect for today's debt total and the debt total ~365 days ago, then extrapolating the daily growth rate. The subtitle shows the implied annual pace in trillions per year. As of 2026, the US adds roughly $1T every 110–130 days.

Why it matters: debt as velocity, not just a static number. The total figure is shocking; the pace is what tells you whether things are accelerating or stabilizing. Watching this card move month-over-month is more informative than watching the headline total tick up.
US National Debt TreasuryDirect

The total US public debt outstanding, sourced from the Treasury Department's official "Debt to the Penny" feed. Updated each business day. As of 2026, this number sits near $40 trillion and grows by roughly $1 trillion every ~120 days.

Why it matters: the denominator of every macro question about fiat purchasing power. Whether you think Bitcoin is "digital gold" or just a speculative asset, the trajectory of this number is the backdrop against which the case is argued.
Required BTC Price Computed

Total US debt ÷ circulating Bitcoin supply. Answers a thought experiment: if every existing bitcoin had to absorb the entire US debt, how much would each one be worth? Pure arithmetic — no claim that this will happen, just a way to express debt scale in BTC terms.

Why it matters: reframes "is BTC overvalued?" against a tangible macro denominator. Even with debt at $36T and ~19.8M BTC outstanding, the per-coin number lands well above current price — context for the long-running "monetary asset" thesis.
Multiple of Current Price Computed

How many times higher BTC's current price would need to be for one bitcoin to equal `debt ÷ supply`. Live ratio — falls when BTC rallies, rises when debt grows or BTC drops.

Why it matters: a single number that tracks how the "BTC vs. debt" gap is closing or widening over time. Compare this to the same metric six months ago to see whether BTC is gaining or losing ground against the macro backdrop.

Network

Block Height mempool.space

The number of blocks that have been mined since the Bitcoin network started in January 2009. Each block is a batch of transactions added to the chain roughly every 10 minutes. Height 1,000,000 is expected around the year 2034.

Why it matters: it's the canonical clock of the Bitcoin network. The "X min ago" timestamp underneath shows how long since the last block — >30 minutes between blocks is unusual and often correlates with hash rate drops.
Mempool Size mempool.space

The mempool ("memory pool") is the global queue of transactions that have been broadcast but haven't been included in a block yet. The two numbers measure it differently:

Why it matters: a large, growing mempool means demand for blockspace is exceeding supply — fees rise. An empty mempool means cheap transactions but also signals reduced network activity.
Recommended Fee mempool.space

Fees are paid in satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB). A typical transaction is ~140 vB, so a 10 sat/vB fee means roughly 1,400 sats (~$1 at $70k BTC) for that transaction.

Why it matters: if you're sending BTC, this tells you what to pay. If you're observing the network, fee levels are a real-time demand gauge — fees spike during ordinal/runes minting events, ETF inflows, or panic moves.
Difficulty Adjustment mempool.space

Bitcoin auto-tunes how hard it is to mine a block every 2,016 blocks (~2 weeks). If blocks have been coming faster than 10 minutes, difficulty goes up. Slower, it goes down. This metric shows the projected change at the next adjustment and the ETA.

Why it matters: a positive adjustment means more miners are coming online — bullish for security and often correlated with miner confidence in price. Big negative adjustments (rare) usually signal miner capitulation.
Hash Rate mempool.space

The total computational power miners are pointing at the Bitcoin network, measured in EH/s — exahashes per second. One exahash = 1018 hashes. This is mempool.space's current estimate rather than a fixed-window average, so expect it to wobble slightly between refreshes. As of 2026, the network runs ~900+ EH/s.

Why it matters: hash rate is Bitcoin's security budget. More hash rate = more expensive to attack the network. Sustained hash rate growth signals miner profitability and long-term confidence; a sharp drop usually means miners shut off (price crash, energy event, regulation).
Circulating Supply CoinGecko

How many BTC have been mined to date, out of the hard-capped 21 million. Approximately 450 new BTC enter circulation per day (post the April 2024 halving), and that rate halves every ~4 years.

Why it matters: Bitcoin's fixed supply schedule is the foundation of its scarcity argument. The "% of 21M cap" number ticks up slowly — the last fraction of a bitcoin won't be mined until ~2140.

Sentiment

Fear & Greed Index alternative.me

A composite 0–100 score blending volatility, market momentum, social sentiment, dominance, and Google Trends.

Why it matters: a contrarian indicator. Warren Buffett's "be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful" rule, expressed as a single number. The 30-day chart next to the gauge shows how sentiment has shifted recently.

History

Price (90 days) CoinGecko

BTC closing price for the last 90 days. Daily granularity.

Why it matters: context for the headline price — is the current number a breakout, a pullback, or chop?
Mempool Fee Histogram mempool.space

Distribution of pending transactions across fee buckets, measured in vMB (virtual megabytes). Tall bars in the high-fee buckets mean lots of users are willing to pay up — congestion.

Why it matters: shows the shape of demand for blockspace, not just the total. If most volume is in the 1–5 sat/vB bucket, eco transactions will confirm soon. If it's clustered at 50+ sat/vB, expect sustained high fees.

FAQ

How often does this dashboard refresh?

Every 60 seconds automatically, plus you can hit the Refresh button anytime. The "Updated" timestamp shows the last successful pull.

Why are some boxes blank or showing errors?

The dashboard pulls from four independent public APIs. If one rate-limits or has a momentary outage, that section will show a dash or stale value while the others keep working. The status bar at the top tells you how many sources reported successfully.

Are any of these numbers predictive?

Not really. The Fear & Greed index has shown some contrarian signal historically. Hash rate trends are more useful for long-term security/miner-health analysis than short-term price calls. None of this is financial advice.

What's a satoshi (sat)?

The smallest unit of bitcoin — one hundred-millionth of a BTC. 100,000,000 sats = 1 BTC. Fees are quoted in sats because most transactions cost a fraction of a cent's worth of BTC.

What's the difference between vBytes and bytes?

Bitcoin's SegWit upgrade lets transactions discount their witness data. Virtual bytes (vB) is the discounted size used for fee calculation; raw bytes is the literal byte count. Miners pack blocks up to 4 million weight units, which works out to ~1 MB of vsize.

How is hash rate measured?

It isn't measured — it's estimated. There's no way to count how many hashes miners around the world are attempting, so the figure is inferred from how quickly recent blocks were found relative to the current difficulty. Because block intervals are random (anywhere from seconds to over an hour), any estimate carries noise, and the number will wobble between refreshes even when nothing has actually changed. Treat it as a trend indicator, not a precise reading.

Where does this data come from?

All endpoints are keyless and public. Nothing about you or your activity is sent anywhere — the dashboard is pure client-side JavaScript talking to public APIs.

Educational use only. Nothing on this dashboard is financial advice.