“It’s only $0.02 — it’s so cheap, it has to go up.” It’s one of the most common mistakes in crypto, and it comes from looking at the wrong number. The price of a single coin tells you almost nothing on its own. What matters is scale — and that’s what market cap and FDV measure.
Market cap: the size right now
Market capitalisation is the total value of all the coins currently in circulation.
A $0.02 coin with 50 billion coins in circulation has a $1 billion market cap. A $50 coin with 20 million in circulation has the same $1 billion. The price per coin looks wildly different; the actual size is identical. That’s why comparing coins by price is meaningless — you compare them by cap.
FDV: the size if everything were released
Fully diluted valuation asks a different question: what would this be worth if every coin that will ever exist were already in circulation?
Many projects release their tokens gradually — team allocations, investor unlocks, staking rewards and ecosystem funds that vest over months or years. Those coins aren’t circulating yet, so they’re not in the market cap, but they will arrive. FDV prices them in as if they already had.
Why the gap matters
The space between market cap and FDV tells you how much future supply is still waiting in the wings:
- Cap and FDV close together → most of the supply is already circulating; limited future dilution.
- FDV far above cap → a large share of tokens is still locked. As they unlock, more supply hits the market — which, all else equal, is a headwind the price has to absorb.
This is the honest read on the “cheap coin” illusion: a low price with a huge max supply can mean heavy dilution ahead, not a bargain. Neither high nor low FDV is “good” or “bad” by itself — it’s context about how crowded the future supply picture is.
What to watch
When you look at any coin, check all three together: price for the unit, market cap for its size today, and FDV for the size once fully unlocked. A big gap between the last two is a flag to go read the token’s unlock schedule — not a reason to do anything, just a reason to understand what you’re looking at.
Compare market caps on the live dashboard →The bottom line
Price per coin is the number that fools people; market cap is the real size now; FDV is the size if every token were released. The gap between cap and FDV is a measure of future dilution. Read all three as context — and never judge a coin as “cheap” by its sticker price alone.