Market Capitalization

Market capitalization scales price by supply so that assets of different unit sizes can be compared. The supply input is circulating supply, which providers define as units they judge to be issued and not locked, burned, or otherwise unavailable. That judgment is editorial: there is no filing, no auditor, and no standard body that certifies a token's circulating supply.

How it is computed

circulating supply x price

Where it misleads

Two providers can publish market caps for the same token that differ by tens of percent, purely because one counts foundation treasury, bridge-escrowed, or unvested team allocations as circulating and the other does not. The figure also assumes every unit could transact at the last price, which is plainly false when daily volume is a small fraction of the total. Coins that are provably unspendable or lost, including early Bitcoin balances that have never moved, are normally still counted. For a stablecoin, market capitalization is the outstanding face value of an issuer liability, not a valuation of anything, and treating it as comparable to a network's market cap is a category error.

The equity comparison, and why it fails

Equity market capitalization; the equity version rests on share counts filed with a regulator and confirmed by an auditor, whereas circulating supply is an unaudited provider estimate that can be revised without any market event.

Reading a high or a low value

A larger market capitalization means the market is pricing the circulating units at a larger aggregate dollar value than a smaller one. It measures aggregate pricing, not cash raised, revenue, assets held, or the amount that could be realized if the units were sold into the market.