Total supply is the total number of coins or tokens that have been created and still exist for a cryptocurrency, excluding any units that have been verifiably burned. In practice, it captures both tokens that are actively tradable and tokens that exist but are not currently available to the market.
What total supply includes (and excludes)
Total supply generally includes tokens in circulation plus tokens that are locked, reserved, staked, vested for team or investors, or held in a project treasury. These tokens exist on-chain, but they may be subject to time-based vesting schedules, smart contract locks, governance controls, or other restrictions that limit immediate selling.
It excludes tokens that have been provably burned, meaning they were intentionally sent to an irrecoverable address or removed through a verifiable mechanism. For example, some protocols burn a portion of transaction fees or periodically destroy tokens to reduce the number of units that exist.
How it differs from circulating supply and max supply
Total supply is often confused with two related metrics. Circulating supply is the subset of total supply that is freely available in the market, typically excluding locked, unvested, or otherwise restricted tokens. Max supply, by contrast, is the hard cap on how many tokens can ever exist if the protocol enforces a limit. Some assets have no fixed max supply, while still having a clear total supply at any given time.
Understanding total supply helps users evaluate scarcity, compare tokenomics across projects, and interpret dilution risk from future unlocks. This matters across the crypto ecosystem because supply metrics influence how markets value assets, how communities assess monetary policy, and how transparently a project manages issuance and burns.