{"slug":"market-cap","term":"Market Cap","category":"Macro & Cycles","definition":"Market cap is a coin's price multiplied by its circulating supply — the market's total valuation of the asset. It ranks coins by size and hints at how much money it takes to move them: large caps need billions to double, micro caps move on thin volume. It measures size, not money actually invested.","street":"A $0.10 coin isn't 'cheap', friend — supply is the other half of the math.","depth":["Price times circulating supply — but the word doing the work is 'circulating'. A token can show a $500M cap with a $5B fully diluted valuation (FDV), meaning 90% of supply is still locked and every unlock is scheduled sell pressure. And cap isn't money in: on a thin order book, a few million dollars of buying can print a billion-dollar valuation that nobody could actually exit at.","Two misreads cost retail the most. Unit bias — a $0.10 coin 'feels' cheaper than a $200 one, but with 50 billion tokens in supply it isn't, and 'it only needs X's market cap to 100x' is arithmetic, not analysis. Then the low-float, high-FDV listings that bleed for years as unlocks hit — the 2021-2024 launch class is a graveyard of them. Before buying, check float, FDV, and the unlock schedule; cap tells you size, the order book tells you the truth."],"live":{"label":"Compare caps across the market","href":"/markets/crypto"},"related":["btc-dominance","market-depth","slippage"]}