Orca Crypto
Technology term

Circulating and total supply

How many tokens exist now versus how many will exist eventually.

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Updated 2026-08-303 min readDefinition
Definition

How many tokens exist now versus how many will exist eventually.

Circulating supply is what is liquid and tradeable today. Total supply includes locked, vesting and reserved tokens. Max supply is the hard ceiling, if one exists.

Comparing the three tells you most of what you need to know about future dilution.

In practice

Bitcoin has a max supply of 21 million, fixed in the protocol. Most tokens have no such limit.

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