Crypto Market Data Explained

Price

Price is what the most recent trades cleared at, aggregated across venues. It says nothing about the size of a project, because the number of units in existence differs enormously between assets. A $0.01 asset is not 'cheaper' than a $60,000 asset in any meaningful sense.

Circulating, total and max supply

• Circulating supply — units considered available in the market today.
• Total supply — units created, minus any verifiably destroyed, including locked or unvested units.
• Max supply — the hard limit, where one exists. Many assets have none.
• Supply figures are estimates that depend on each data provider's methodology for locked, burned and unreachable units.

Market capitalisation

Market cap is price multiplied by circulating supply. It is a size comparison, not a measure of money that has entered the asset. A thinly traded asset can carry a large notional market cap that could not be realised by selling.

Worked example: 50,000,000 circulating units at $2.40 gives a market cap of $120,000,000. If a further 50,000,000 units are locked, the fully diluted valuation at the same price is $240,000,000 — the same asset, double the headline number.

Fully diluted valuation (FDV)

FDV applies today's price to the total or maximum supply. It answers a hypothetical: what would the market cap be if every unit existed today at this price. Large gaps between market cap and FDV indicate that a substantial share of supply has yet to enter circulation, which is information about future dilution, not a prediction.

24-hour volume

Volume is the value traded over the period. It is a rough proxy for how easily a position can be entered or exited, not a measure of net buying. Every trade has both a buyer and a seller, so high volume does not mean money flowing in.

• Volume figures vary between providers depending on which venues are included and how reported trades are filtered.
• Volume that is very small relative to market cap is a sign of thin liquidity.

Liquidity and slippage

Liquidity describes how much can be traded without moving the price. Slippage is the difference between the price you expected and the price you received, and it grows with order size on thin markets.

This is why a large market cap does not guarantee an easy exit: what matters is the depth of orders near the current price, not the notional total.

Rank and 'change' columns

• Rank orders assets by market cap. It reflects size, not quality, safety or prospects.
• 1h, 24h and 7d change compare the current price to the price at those points. Short windows are noise-dominated.
• Every figure carries a timestamp. Data from different providers rarely matches exactly, because the venue sets and update intervals differ.

Sources

• Investor.gov — general investing concepts (SEC)