The HODL Cave metric analyzes the spread of historical returns for investors who hold a digital asset over various durations and visualizes both the potential gains and risks of holding. The data can be used to understand how the duration of an investor's holdings influences returns, highlighting both potential long-term growth and short-term volatility in digital assets.

The chart shows the holding period in days on the x-axis and on the y-axis the distribution of returns that were historically observed when holding the asset for this amount of time are shown as percentiles. The metric can answer questions like "What have been the typical returns for holding this asset for three years?" For example, at a three-year holding duration, if the "80" percentile line shows a 5x return, it means 80% of all three-year holding periods achieved at least that return.

Note that the data shown in this metric is not static, since new holding windows (ending with the current timestamp) will contribute to all existing holding periods and in turn modify the observed distribution of returns.

This metric was first introduced by Unchained Capital.