Total Supply

Total supply counts every unit of an asset that has been created and not destroyed. It includes circulating tokens, tokens locked in vesting schedules, treasury reserves, and tokens held by the project itself. It excludes tokens that have been burned, since those no longer exist.

The gap between circulating and total supply tells you how much future unlocking is still ahead. If a token has a total supply of 1 billion and 200 million circulating, 800 million tokens could enter the market later. That does not mean they will all be sold, but it is a meaningful source of potential supply that the current price may not reflect.

Total supply differs from max supply. Max supply is the ceiling that can ever exist under the rules; total supply is what exists today. For Bitcoin the two converge over time as mining continues. For a token with no cap, total supply can keep growing indefinitely.