Total Supply

Total supply is the number of units of a cryptocurrency that currently exist — all coins or tokens created so far, minus any that have been verifiably destroyed (burned). It sits between two related measures: circulating supply, which counts only the coins freely available in the market, and max supply, the hard ceiling on how many can ever exist.

The gap between total and circulating supply usually consists of tokens that exist but are locked: team and investor allocations under vesting schedules, treasury reserves, staking or ecosystem funds, and tokens set aside for future rewards. For example, a project might mint its full 1 billion tokens at launch (total supply: 1 billion) but release only 150 million to the public (circulating supply: 150 million), with the remainder unlocking gradually over several years.

A common misconception is that total supply is the figure used to rank cryptocurrencies by market cap; rankings use circulating supply, while total supply matters more for judging future dilution — a token whose total supply far exceeds its circulating supply has significant unlocks ahead that can pressure the price. Burns reduce total supply permanently: when tokens are sent to an unspendable address, they are subtracted from the count. Ethereum is a notable case where total supply changes dynamically, since new ETH is issued to validators while a portion of every transaction fee is burned.