Market cap explained: why the price tag misleads

The formula

For a stock: market cap = share price × shares outstanding. For a cryptocurrency: market cap = price × circulating supply. Either way, it answers "how much would it cost (today, ignoring slippage) to buy every existing unit of this asset?". That is the real-money size of the asset.

Why price alone is misleading

A token priced at $0.001 is not "cheap" and a token priced at $50,000 is not "expensive" — those numbers are only meaningful when paired with supply. Doubling the supply of a token halves its price for the same market cap. Two coins at vastly different prices can have the same market cap. Two coins at the same price can have vastly different market caps.

When you compare assets, compare market caps, not prices.

Circulating vs total vs fully-diluted

Circulating supply is what is actually trading right now. Total supply is what has been issued (including tokens locked, staked or in treasuries). Fully-diluted valuation (FDV) is what the market cap would be if every token that will ever exist was already in circulation. For tokens with heavy future emissions, FDV often dwarfs market cap — and any analysis based on market cap alone misses that future supply.

How Signodex shows market cap

Every Signodex per-symbol page displays the current market cap and links it to the asset's rank by market cap. The AI Deep Analysis cites market-cap relative position when relevant ("Mid-cap, ranked between Solana and Cardano, suggesting comparable liquidity for the analysis window"). The AI never uses market cap as a buy/sell argument on its own.