Crypto Tracker: How It Works
This tracker shows live prices, 24-hour movement, market capitalisation and volume for major cryptocurrencies. Those four numbers together tell you far more than price alone — and this page explains what each one actually measures, because price in isolation is close to meaningless.
Why price alone tells you nothing
A coin priced at 0.50 is not 'cheaper' than one at 50,000. Price is market capitalisation divided by circulating supply, and supply is an arbitrary design choice. A project can issue a trillion tokens or twenty-one million; the per-unit price follows mechanically from that decision.
Market cap = price × circulating supply
| Asset | Price | Supply | Market cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coin A | 50,000 | 20 million | 1 trillion |
| Coin B | 0.50 | 2 trillion | 1 trillion |
Identical size, wildly different price. Market cap is the number to compare; price is the number people quote.
Circulating, total and fully diluted
- Circulating supply — tokens actually tradeable now.
- Total supply — everything issued, including locked or reserved allocations.
- Max supply — the protocol's hard ceiling, where one exists.
Fully diluted valuation is price × max supply. When FDV is many times market cap, a large share of supply has yet to enter circulation, and those tokens will arrive on some schedule. A project with a 500 million market cap and a 5 billion FDV has 90% of its supply still to unlock — persistent sell pressure that no chart of past price will show you.
Volume is the reality check
Twenty-four hour volume tells you whether a price is real. A large market cap on tiny volume means the price is set by very few trades and could not survive anyone actually selling. As a rough guide, healthy assets trade several percent of their market cap daily; a ratio far below 1% suggests illiquidity, and a ratio far above 100% often indicates wash trading rather than genuine interest.
Volatility, in plain numbers
| Asset class | Typical annual volatility | Historic peak-to-trough drawdown |
|---|---|---|
| Broad equity index | 15% – 20% | 50% – 57% |
| Gold | 12% – 18% | ≈ 45% |
| Large-cap crypto | 60% – 90% | 80% – 94% |
| Small-cap crypto | 100%+ | Frequently 95%+, often permanent |
An 80% fall requires a 400% rise to recover. A 94% fall requires 1,567%. This asymmetry is why position sizing matters more in this asset class than in any other, and why the standard advice is to hold only what you could lose entirely without changing your plans.
Reading the 24-hour change
A 24-hour figure is a rolling window, not a calendar day, and it compares against a single point in time. A −10% reading may reflect a genuine fall today or an unusual spike exactly 24 hours ago. Cross-check against a 7-day and 30-day view before drawing conclusions, and be aware that crypto markets trade continuously, so there is no close to anchor against.
Where the prices come from
Quoted prices are typically volume-weighted averages across multiple exchanges. Individual exchanges differ, sometimes substantially for thinly traded assets, and the price you can actually transact at includes the exchange spread, trading fees and, for larger orders, slippage as you consume the order book. Treat any displayed price as a reference, not a quote.
What this tracker does not do
It reports market data. It does not assess whether a project is legitimate, whether its team is identifiable, whether its code has been audited, or whether its supply schedule is designed to disadvantage later buyers. Listing on a data feed is not an endorsement — a token appearing here has met a data aggregator's inclusion criteria, nothing more.