Circulating Supply

Glossary · Whales & On-Chain

Circulating supply is the number of tokens actually available to trade — total supply minus what is locked, vesting, burned or held by the project in reserve. Market cap is price times this number, so its accuracy decides whether a valuation is real. Reported figures come from projects and aggregators and are frequently wrong for small coins.

"A coin's market cap is only as honest as its supply figure, and the supply figure was typed into a form by the team."

The gaps between figures matter: total supply includes locked tokens, max supply includes tokens not yet minted, and circulating is the tradeable slice. Two aggregators can show market caps that differ by half for the same coin because one counts foundation holdings as circulating and the other does not. Our coin index uses CoinGecko's circulating figure and shows max supply beside it; a coin whose circulating is a small share of max has most of its supply still to arrive.

For trading, supply changes are events: an unlock moves tokens from locked to circulating and the sellers who receive them are real; a burn removes supply and is usually priced in on announcement. The trap is a market cap that looks small because the circulating figure is stale — check the unlock schedule and the FDV before believing a valuation.

Supply and cap on every coin page

Related jargon

Questions

What is Circulating Supply in crypto trading?

Circulating supply is the number of tokens actually available to trade — total supply minus what is locked, vesting, burned or held by the project in reserve. Market cap is price times this number, so its accuracy decides whether a valuation is real. Reported figures come from projects and aggregators and are frequently wrong for small coins.

How would a trader say it?

A coin's market cap is only as honest as its supply figure, and the supply figure was typed into a form by the team.

Part of the Crypto Jargon glossary — every term, decoded the way a trader would say it.

Crypto Jargon

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