Market Cap

Glossary · Macro & Cycles

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.

"A $0.10 coin isn't 'cheap', friend — supply is the other half of the math."

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.

Compare caps across the market

Related jargon

Questions

What is Market Cap in crypto trading?

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.

How would a trader say it?

A $0.10 coin isn't 'cheap', friend — supply is the other half of the math.

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

Crypto Jargon

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