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Supply and who holds it

Lesson 2 of 4
By the end of this lesson you’ll be able to read a token’s three supply numbers, work out from its vesting schedule how many new tokens are coming and when, and check how much of the supply a few wallets hold.
A collage. A vast flock of sheep covers a dark hillside and presses against a dry-stone wall, held back by one small deep blue gate. In the field in front of the wall, only five sheep graze.

Read the three supply numbers

Circulating
Circulating supply is what’s out in the market and free to trade. For most tokens CoinGecko works it out by “deducting locked tokens from Total Supply,” and the addresses of those locked tokens “are obtained from the token teams.”
Total
Total supply is every token that exists now, locked or not, less any that have been destroyed.
Max
Max supply is the most that can ever exist under the token’s rules. Some tokens have no cap.

Market value, which listing sites such as CoinGecko call market cap, is the price times the circulating supply. Fully diluted value, usually shortened to FDV, is the price times the whole supply: what every token would be worth at today’s price if all of them were already out. Listing sites differ on whether that means total or max supply, so check which one yours uses.

The gap between the two values is the first thing to look at. When the FDV is many times the market value, most of the token hasn’t reached the market yet, so find out who holds it or when it will be created.

FDV is a calculation done at today’s price, and nobody should read it as a forecast.

CoinGecko adds a caution worth keeping. Circulating supply “is obtained from the various token teams and is verified by the CoinGecko team,” and where it can’t be verified the site shows a dash instead of a number. A dash is information too.

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