Most people who lose money on a token do not lose it because a number was false. They lose it because the token page presented a figure that was technically accurate and structurally misleading. This guide covers the specific metrics, the arithmetic behind them, and the questions that turn a token page into a document you can evaluate.

• Every headline number is derived. Market capitalisation, fully diluted valuation and volume are all price multiplied by a supply figure, and the supply figure is the part that gets chosen.
• Circular supply is a snapshot, not a constant. A token page describes supply as of a date. Unlocks change the denominator on a schedule published elsewhere.
• Liquidity is the number that decides whether a valuation is real. A large market capitalisation on thin depth is a paper number.
• Read the page twice: once for what it says, once for what it omits. Missing sections are usually the most informative part of a token page.

What a token page is actually showing you

A token page is a dashboard maintained by the issuer or by a data aggregator, and the two are not the same. An issuer’s page is marketing with metrics attached. An aggregator’s page is metrics with marketing attached, sourced from an API that the issuer or a third party controls.

That distinction determines how much weight to give each figure. A supply number pulled from a contract is verifiable. A “community” count is not. A trading volume figure may come from the venue itself, which means it is a self-reported number that no one has audited. Trust what can be recomputed from a public chain, and discount what requires trusting a counterparty.

Reading the supply section of a token page

Supply is where most misreadings begin, because three different denominators get used in the same paragraph and only one of them is usually labelled clearly.

Circulating, total and maximum are three different things

Circulating supply is an estimate of tokens that are transferable and not held by the issuer or locked by contract. It is an estimate because the definition of “circulating” varies by project. Tokens held in a foundation treasury may or may not be counted. Tokens vesting to a team may or may not be counted.

Total supply is everything that exists on the contract right now, including locked and treasury balances. Maximum supply is a cap written into the code or promised in documentation — and a promised cap is not the same as a coded one.

Unlocks change the denominator, not the price

An unlock does not move the price by itself. It increases the number of tokens that can be sold, which changes the ratio between the price and the supply figure. If the market capitalisation stayed flat while supply rose by a fifth, the price per token fell by roughly a sixth. That arithmetic is not a prediction, it is just how division works.

This is why the unlock schedule matters more than the current supply. A page showing a clean circulating figure while hiding a large scheduled unlock is showing you a numerator without the denominator that is about to change.

Which numbers on a token page deserve scrutiny

The following table lists the metrics most commonly displayed, what each one measures, and what it tends to conceal.

The first column is what the page shows prominently. The third is the reason the second is not enough on its own.

A valuation is a claim about a market that does not exist yet. The only number on a token page that describes a market that does exist is depth, and it is usually the smallest number on the page.

A worked example on one token page

Suppose a token page states a price of $1.50, a circulating supply of 180 million, a total supply of 1 billion, and twenty-four hour volume of $4 million.

Two figures and the gap between them

Market capitalisation is 180,000,000 × $1.50 = $270 million. Fully diluted valuation is 1,000,000,000 × $1.50 = $1.5 billion. The gap of $1.23 billion is not a rounding difference — it is the value the page implicitly assigns to tokens that do not yet exist in the float.

Adding volume and unlocks

Now add the trading data. Daily volume of $4 million against a $270 million market capitalisation is a turnover ratio of about 1.5 percent. That is thin: the entire float does not change hands even once a month.

Finally, apply an unlock. If 25 million tokens vest next quarter, the new circulating supply is 205 million. At the same $1.50 price, market capitalisation becomes $307.5 million, and the newly released tokens are 25 ÷ 205 = 12.2 percent of the new float. Whether that matters depends on whether the recipients sell, which no page can tell you. What the page can tell you is the size of the overhang, and this one is not small.

Questions that turn a token page into a decision

Reading a token page well is a short checklist applied consistently. The sequence below takes about ten minutes and replaces most of the guesswork.

1. Note the date of every supply figure. If no date is shown, treat the number as undated and therefore unreliable.
2. Recompute market capitalisation and fully diluted valuation yourself from the stated price and supply, and write down both numbers.
3. Find the unlock schedule, which is usually in documentation rather than on the page, and convert it into a percentage of current circulating supply per quarter.
4. Compare volume to market capitalisation to get a rough turnover ratio, and check whether volume is spread across venues or concentrated on one.
5. Check the distribution of holdings. A large share in a small number of addresses changes how much of the float is realistically available.
6. Write one sentence stating the strongest argument against the token. If the page gave you nothing to work with, that absence is the finding.

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