Market capitalization is calculated as circulating supply × current price. Price alone is misleading: DOGE at $0.20 sounds cheap until you note its $30B market cap, which makes it a meaningfully large asset. Three flavors are tracked: (1) circulating market cap — supply currently in circulation × price, (2) Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) — maximum supply × price, used to project the ceiling once vesting completes, (3) realized cap — each coin valued at the price it last moved (used most often for Bitcoin to estimate aggregate cost basis). A high FDV/MC ratio signals significant future unlock pressure and warrants caution on freshly listed or post-airdrop tokens. Market cap drives ranking — BTC and ETH have held the #1 and #2 slots for years. Market cap can be manipulated: low-liquidity tokens with large total supplies often display 'phantom market cap.' Real volume and order book depth are stronger validators of an asset's true size.
Crypto Glossary
What is Market Capitalization?
Market cap is a coin's circulating supply multiplied by its current price — a more accurate measure of size than price alone.