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What is fully diluted valuation?
Fully diluted valuation (FDV) is a token's current price multiplied by its maximum or total supply, including units that are locked or not yet created. It shows what the market cap would be if every token existed and traded at today's price.
What it means for you
A wide gap between market cap and FDV means many tokens are still to come, from unlocks or new issuance; as they arrive, each existing token is a smaller share of the whole. FDV assumes today's price holds as supply grows, which may not happen.
How it works
FDV applies the market-cap formula, which FINRA defines as units outstanding times current price, to a token's full supply instead of the units circulating today. The gap between the two is made of supply items the SEC asks offerings to disclose: units reserved for a treasury or particular participants, units subject to vesting or lock-ups, and units still to be minted under the issuance rules. If there is no fixed maximum, or someone can change the supply rules, the full supply used in FDV is itself only today's figure.
An example
Say a token trades at $1 with 10 million units circulating and a maximum supply of 100 million. Market cap is $10 million and FDV is $100 million. Today's circulating units are 10% of the eventual supply; the other 90 million can arrive through unlocks or new issuance.
Sources: FINRA: Market Cap Explained, SEC: Statement on Offerings and Registrations of Securities in the Crypto Asset Markets · checked 4 October 2026
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