Circulating, total and max supply

Three numbers

• Circulating supplyCirculating supply The number of coins currently available and moving in the market.: coins available to trade right now.
• Total supply: coins created so far, including any that are locked up or reserved.
• Max supplyMax supply The most coins that will ever exist, if the protocol sets a limit.: the most that will ever exist. Bitcoin’s is 21 million. Some assets, like ether, have no cap.

Fully diluted valuation

FDVFully diluted valuation What a project's market cap would be if every token that will ever exist were already in circulation. = price × max supply (or total supply, if there’s no max). It asks: what would this project be worth if every token were already out there?

A large gap between market cap and FDV means lots of tokens are still to come, often through token unlocksToken unlock A scheduled release of tokens held by insiders or investors, adding to circulating supply. for early investors and teams. When those unlock, the added supply can weigh on the price.

Reading a price page

When you look at an asset page, ask:

1. How much of the max supply is already circulating?
2. Who holds the rest, and when is it released?
3. Is new supply created continuously, like staking rewards, or on a fixed schedule, like halvings?

Those answers explain a lot about how a token’s price might behave. This isn’t a prediction. Supply is one input among many.