Circulating Supply

Circulating supply is the count of coins or tokens that have actually been issued and are available to the public right now, as opposed to units still locked in vesting contracts, held in reserve by a founding team, or not yet minted at all.

It is the figure used to calculate a project's headline market capitalization: circulating supply multiplied by current price. Because market cap is used to rank and compare crypto assets, an accurate circulating supply number matters. Projects that obscure locked treasury or team allocations can make their market cap look smaller, and their price look cheaper, than the fully diluted picture would suggest.

Circulating supply differs from two related figures. Total supply counts every coin created so far, including those locked or reserved, minus any that have been burned. Maximum supply is the hard cap a protocol will ever issue, if one exists. Bitcoin, for example, has a circulating supply of roughly 20 million coins against a 21 million maximum, with the remainder trickling out through mining rewards until around the year 2140.

Circulating supply is not static. It rises as new coins are mined or staking rewards are distributed, and it can jump sharply when a token unlock releases previously vested team or investor allocations, often creating fresh sell pressure. Some projects deliberately shrink circulating supply instead, through scheduled token burns or buyback-and-burn programs.