Market cap vs fully diluted valuation: what FDV means in crypto

Market cap and fully diluted valuation measure the same token at two different moments. Market cap uses the tokens trading today. FDV uses the entire planned supply. When a big slice of tokens is still locked, FDV towers over market cap, and that gap is a warning about future selling.

Both numbers sit side by side on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap, the same token pages that carry bitcoin dominance and other market-cap metrics. Most buyers read the first number and skip the second. That habit is how people overpay.

What market cap and FDV each measure

Market cap is the price of one token times the number of tokens in circulation. Those are the coins already issued and free to trade. CoinGecko writes the formula as market cap equals token price times circulating supply. It is a snapshot of what the market values right now.

Fully diluted valuation uses a bigger number. It multiplies the same price by the total supply, including the tokens not yet in circulation. A token trading at $1 with 100 million coins out but 1 billion planned has a market cap of $100 million and an FDV of $1 billion. Same price. Very different headline figure.

Circulating supply is not always a clean number either. Different trackers count it slightly differently, and projects sometimes dispute the figure a site uses. For most large tokens the gap is small. For newer ones it can be wide enough to shift the market cap a reader sees by a real margin.

Why the same token shows a different FDV on different sites

Two of the biggest data sites do not calculate FDV the same way. CoinGecko's guide, written by freelance contributor Joel Agbo and updated on 9 June 2025, states it plainly: "The FDV considers all tokens in supply (total supply) and not only the circulating ones." CoinMarketCap's glossary tells readers to take the total supply and multiply by price, yet its own worked example uses the maximum supply instead.

That difference matters when total supply and maximum supply are not equal. A token can have 1 billion coins minted so far but a hard cap of 2 billion. One site may price the 1 billion, the other the 2 billion. The reader sees one label, FDV, and no hint of which rule produced it.

Neither site puts the chosen supply rule next to the number at a glance. So the same coin can show two FDVs that sit far apart, and a reader cannot always tell which one is on the screen. The fix is dull but reliable. Open the supply fields and see whether the figure was built on total supply or on the maximum cap.

How to read the market cap to FDV ratio

CoinGecko shows a market cap to FDV ratio on each token page, and it is the fastest read on dilution. The ratio compares what is circulating against the full supply. CoinGecko describes it as a way to see "how far (or near) the coin is from its full unlock with all coins available to the public."

A ratio near 1 means almost every token is already trading. Little new supply is waiting to hit the market. A ratio near 0.1 means the opposite. Roughly nine in ten tokens are still to come, and each unlock adds sellers the current price has not had to absorb.

Picture two tokens, each with a market cap of $50 million. The first has a ratio of 0.9, so nearly all its coins already trade. The second has a ratio of 0.1, which means its full supply is worth $500 million on paper and nine tenths of it has yet to arrive. You would pay the same price today for very different odds on dilution.

That is the whole point of reading both figures. The market cap is identical. The future supply is not. Buy on the first number alone and you are blind to the second token's overhang.

Where to check a token's real supply

Checking the supply yourself takes a few minutes. A project's own documentation usually lists the total supply, the maximum supply and the vesting schedule. Token pages on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap show circulating, total and, where it exists, maximum supply in a single row. Reading those three numbers tells you more than the FDV headline does.

Allocation tables are where the real story sits. A healthy launch tends to put a meaningful share in public hands and spread team and investor tokens over long vesting periods. A launch that hands founders and early backers most of the supply on a short schedule leaves buyers holding a small, expensive float while the large holders wait to sell. FDV alone will not show you that split. The allocation breakdown will.

Market cap has its own blind spot. It counts circulating supply, but coins that are lost, burned or frozen in a dead contract often still get counted as circulating on trackers. So market cap can overstate the supply that is genuinely liquid, just as FDV can overstate the supply that will ever exist. Two rough numbers. Read both with care.

Token unlocks and the dilution the gap warns about

Big gaps between market cap and FDV usually mean tokens are locked on a vesting schedule. Team allocations, investor rounds, staking rewards and airdrops often sit outside circulation for months or years. When they unlock, supply rises. Unless demand rises with it, the price per token has further to fall.

CoinGecko's own guide walks through one case. It uses EVMOS at a price of $2.70 against a supply of 1 billion tokens, which puts FDV at $2.7 billion. The guide notes that 32 percent of the supply was set aside for staking rewards and 8 percent for an airdrop. Two in five tokens, in other words, were future supply the market cap did not yet count.

Unlocks do not all land the same way. Some schedules release a block of tokens on a single date, a cliff, which drops a concentrated batch of new supply at once. Others release a trickle every day or month. A cliff is the one to mark on a calendar, because it can lift the circulating supply sharply in a single session while demand stays flat.

What FDV does not tell you

FDV is a theoretical ceiling, not a price forecast. It answers one question only: what this project would be worth if every planned token traded at today's price. Prices move. Supply schedules slip. The number says nothing about demand, revenue or whether the tokens will ever all exist.

New tokens show the widest gaps. A project can launch with 5 percent of its supply circulating and the rest vesting over three or four years. At that point the FDV can run to twenty times the market cap, and headlines that quote the bigger number make the token look far larger than the money actually behind it. A year of unlocks later, the two figures sit closer.

Some tokens have no FDV at all. CoinGecko notes that coins without a maximum supply show no fully diluted figure, because there is no final supply to price against. Ether is the best known case, since it has no fixed cap. Burned tokens drop out too. When a project destroys coins, they leave the total supply, so FDV falls with them.

That framing is borrowed from stocks. CoinMarketCap compares it to a company that looks worth $100 million until you add $50 million of options and $30 million of convertible debt. Counted fully, the real figure is $180 million, 80 percent above the first glance. Crypto unlocks work the same way.

Traps to watch with FDV

A low market cap to FDV ratio is a flag, not a verdict. It belongs with open interest on the list of crypto numbers that look precise and still mislead. Plenty of sound projects launch with most of their supply locked, and plenty of weak ones circulate everything on day one. The ratio tells you how much future supply exists, not whether the project is any good.

Read the two numbers together. A token that looks cheap on market cap can look expensive the moment you price the full supply. Check the unlock schedule before you trust either figure. None of this is a reason to buy or sell. It is a reason to know which number you are looking at.