GLOSSARY // Crypto
Circulating Supply
Circulating supply is the number of coins currently available and trading in the market, as opposed to coins that are locked, reserved, or not yet issued. It is the figure that matters for market cap, because market cap equals price times circulating supply.
Watch it against the maximum supply. A coin with 20% of its tokens circulating and 80% still scheduled to unlock has a lot of future selling pressure baked in, even if today's price looks cheap. Two coins at the same price can be worth very different amounts once you multiply by how many coins actually exist.
A token trades at $2 with 50 million coins circulating, so its market cap is $100 million. If another 450 million coins are scheduled to unlock, the fully diluted value is $1 billion — ten times larger — which reframes whether $2 is really cheap.
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Educational only — not financial advice. Definitions simplified for clarity; markets are messier than definitions.