The market capitalization of every crypto asset the data provider lists, added together. It is the headline "the crypto market is worth $X" figure. It is the broadest measure available and also the least precise, for a reason worth understanding before quoting it.
Live. The figure above updates in your browser while this page is open, and the page was built with a real one in it rather than a blank.
The plain description
The market capitalization of every crypto asset the data provider lists, added together. It is the headline "the crypto market is worth $X" figure.
It is the broadest measure available and also the least precise, for a reason worth understanding before quoting it.
Stated so you could reproduce it
For each asset: price times circulating supply. Then add them all up.
The soft part is in both halves. Circulating supply is an estimate for a great many tokens, and price for an illiquid token is the last price somebody paid, which may be a very small trade. A token can carry a nine figure market cap on a few thousand dollars of real liquidity, and that figure is inside this total.
The bands, and what each one actually means
| Reading | What it indicates |
|---|---|
| The direction | Far more useful than the level. TOTAL rising while dominance falls is broad participation; TOTAL rising while dominance rises is concentration. |
| Against TOTAL2 | The gap between them is Bitcoin. Watching both answers "is this move Bitcoin, or is it everything". |
| The 24 hour change | Printed on the tile. A percentage move on a figure this large is a lot of money and very little information on its own. |
The part that gets left out
- It is not money invested. Market cap is the last price multiplied by supply. Nobody has to have put that much in, and nobody could take that much out.
- It includes stablecoins, which are dollars rather than a bet on anything. On some days a meaningful part of a TOTAL move is stablecoin supply changing.
- It includes thousands of near worthless tokens and their estimated supplies. The tail is noisy and the total inherits that noise.
- Different providers publish different totals for all of the above reasons. A difference of tens of billions between two sites is normal.