Circulating Supply

Circulating supply counts the units of an asset that are out in the market and able to change hands. It excludes tokens that are locked in vesting contracts, held in reserve by a foundation and not yet released, or otherwise unavailable. It is the supply figure used to calculate market cap.

For Bitcoin, circulating supply is straightforward: every coin that has been mined, which was about 19.9 million by late 2025, out of a maximum of 21 million. For newer tokens the number can be much smaller than the total. A project might have 1 billion tokens in existence with only 150 million circulating because the rest is locked for the team and investors.

Data sites estimate circulating supply from on-chain data and project disclosures, so figures can differ slightly between sources. Coins that are provably lost, such as bitcoin sent to unspendable addresses, are usually still counted because nobody can confirm exactly how many are gone.