Understanding crypto prices and market cap

Where a price comes from

Crypto trades around the clock on hundreds of exchanges. Each has its own order book and its own last traded price, and they differ slightly. Data providers combine them into the single figure you see, weighting by volume and leaving out markets that look unreliable. Wardcrest’s prices come from CoinGecko market data refreshed every few minutes, with Bitcoin, ether and other major prices cross-checked against Chainlink price feeds on the blockchain.

When you buy, you pay the exchange’s price rather than the reference price, plus its fee and spread. Our converter shows the reference rate in 50 currencies, a useful yardstick for any quote.

Market cap and supply

market cap = price × circulating supply

Coins that are locked, still vesting or held in a project’s treasury are usually left out of circulating supply. The fully diluted valuation (FDV) instead multiplies the price by the maximum or total supply: what the market cap would be if every coin that can exist were circulating.

A wide gap between market cap and FDV means many coins are still to be released, often to early investors and the team on a vesting schedule, and each release adds supply that someone may want to sell. Bitcoin’s circulating supply is already well over 90% of its 21 million limit, whereas many newer tokens launch with only a small fraction in circulation.

Why a low price is not cheap

A coin’s price mostly reflects how many units exist. A token with 500 billion units at $0.001 has the same market cap, $500 million, as one with 10 million units at $50. Neither is cheaper than the other. Asking whether the $0.001 token could reach $1 is asking whether it could be worth $500 billion.

Our market cap calculator runs that arithmetic for any coin: the price it would have at another coin’s market cap, or at any figure you choose. It puts a valuation in perspective; it is not a forecast.

Volume and liquidity

Trading volume is the value traded over the last 24 hours. It shows how active a market is and, indirectly, how easily you could buy or sell without moving the price, which is liquidity. A coin with a large market cap but thin volume can be hard to sell in size: the first orders use up the few buyers, and the price drops before the rest is filled.

Reported volume is not always genuine. Some exchanges have been shown to inflate it with trades between their own accounts, which is one reason data providers weight exchanges by how trustworthy their figures look.

Reading percentage moves

Percentages are not symmetrical. A coin that falls 50% needs to rise 100% to get back to where it started, and one that falls 90% needs to rise 900%.

gain needed to recover = loss ÷ (1 − loss)

The percentage calculator works these out, and the compare tool puts two coins side by side with their performance over a week, a month or a year and their distance from their all-time highs.

Using the numbers sensibly

• Rank coins by market cap, not price, and check circulating supply and FDV before comparing two of them.
• Look at volume and at where a coin trades. One listed on a single small exchange carries extra risk.
• Be suspicious of a sudden spike on thin volume, especially right after someone has promoted the coin to you.
• Step back from single coins: the categories page ranks whole sectors, and the heatmap shows the entire market at once.

None of these numbers tells you what a coin will be worth tomorrow. This guide explains how to read them; it is not financial advice.