Price and Market Cap
Market cap = price x circulating supply. It measures total value far better than price alone.
Quick answer
Market cap equals price multiplied by circulating supply. A low price with a huge supply can be worth more than a high price with a tiny supply.
What it means
Price is the cost of one token. Circulating supply is how many tokens are currently tradable. Market cap combines them into a single measure of size.
Why it matters
Two tokens at the same price can have wildly different market caps. Judging value by price alone leads to the '$0.001 is cheap' trap. Always compare market cap.
What happens if you ignore this
If you buy because a token 'only costs $0.0001', you can pour money into something already valued at hundreds of millions — with almost no room to grow and lots of room to fall. Ignoring market cap is how beginners overpay for 'cheap' tokens.
Common mistakes
Assuming a low unit price means a token is 'cheap' or has more room to grow, without checking supply and market cap.
Story
Sam sees two memecoins. Coin A costs $0.000005; Coin B costs $2. 'A is way cheaper,' he thinks, 'so it has more upside.'
He expects the $0.000005 coin to 100x more easily.
Coin A has 500 billion tokens (a $2.5M cap) — but Coin B has only 500,000 tokens (a $1M cap). The 'expensive' coin is actually the smaller, earlier one.
Unit price tells you almost nothing. Market cap (price × supply) is the real size. Always compare caps, not sticker prices.
Examples
Token A: $0.001 x 100,000,000,000 = $100M cap. Token B: $10 x 1,000,000 = $10M cap. The 'cheaper' token is actually 10x larger.
Beginner tips
- Before you judge if a token is 'cheap,' find its market cap — not its unit price.
- A tiny price with a massive supply is not the same as being early.
- On BlackPebble Markets, sort and compare by market cap to size things up fairly.
Common mistakes
- Comparing tokens by unit price instead of market cap.
- Assuming increasing supply raises the price on its own.