Research
Shares vs. Tokens: Why We Need "Outstanding Supply" and a Smarter Circulating Supply
Zheng Jie
Cosmo Jiang
August 26, 2025
Summary: Currently, crypto data providers show wildly different supply metrics for the same token which drastically affects market cap or valuation multiples (e.g Market Cap/Revenue). Artemis and Pantera Capital propose a simple framework called Outstanding Supply which is Total Supply - Total Protocol Holdings that is similar to Outstanding Shares which is Total Issued Shares - Total Treasury Shares in the equities market. Our aim is to give investors a clearer apples-to-apples comparison between tokens and stocks when it comes to valuation.
When you buy a stock, there are a few numbers every investor looks at to understand how many shares exist:
These numbers matter because they help investors figure out:
Let’s look at Uber.
Now, imagine if Uber was valued on its Authorized Shares, that would make Uber look like a $469 billion company trading at 70x forward P/E, which seems unreasonable. Authorized Shares is not a number any investor uses to model a company’s valuation, because Authorized Shares * price is not economically relevant.
However, in reality, investors value Uber on Outstanding Shares (~2.09 billion), which puts Uber’s market cap closer to $195.9 billion (as of August 17th, 2025) and a 30x forward P/E. Outstanding Shares represent the economic reality of who owns a piece of the value of the company.
In crypto, most investors only refer to a token’s Circulating Supply.
Circulating Supply = Tokens available for public tradingHowever, Circulating Supply definitions vary wildly:
On the other hand, investors will often see FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation)
FDV = Token Price x Total Supply That’s like valuing Uber as if every single share that exists was tradable tomorrow, or the $469B market cap as described above, which is also not economically correct.
So investors are left choosing between: FDV (everything that exists), or Circulating Supply (messy, inconsistent definitions that, critically, often exclude outstanding and unvested tokens).
Here is how Outstanding Supply comes in. Outstanding Supply counts all tokens that have already been created and it excludes protocol-owned balances like foundations, treasuries or labs that aren’t really in circulation.
Think of it as crypto’s version of Outstanding Shares.
Outstanding Supply is more relevant than FDV.
Outstanding Supply is cleaner and more standardized than Circulating Supply.
Outstanding Supply is a middle ground grounded in economic reality that investors can actually trust.
For years, crypto defaulted to valuing tokens as FDV = Max Supply * Price. That’s like valuing Uber as if all 5 billion Authorized Shares were already issued. This make Uber valuation come up to ~$469 billion, instead of ~$196 billion market cap you’d normally see on Google Finance.
The industry then shifted to using Total Supply, but this still overstates valuations because Total Supply includes total protocol holdings. For instance, 6% of Hyperliquid’s 1B HYPE tokens (60M tokens) sit with the Hyper Foundation. These tokens belong to the protocol and can be deployed for operations, grants, or team compensation. They aren’t economically equivalent to tokens owned by investors.
That’s why, Hyperliquid’s Outstanding Supply (~$20.8 billion) provides the closest “true” view of market cap. It mirrors Outstanding Shares in equities - all tokens held by investors, excluding treasury shares.
By contrast, Hyperliquid’s Circulating Supply valuation (~$10.5 billion) is closer to how much HYPE tokens are actually liquid and tradeable, similar to Floating Shares for stocks.
These supply metrics matter because valuation multiples like P/E or P/S become artificially inflated when calculated on FDV - effectively penalizing businesses with large amounts of supply that have not yet been released into circulation, like Hyperliquid, compared to peers.
Footnote: Our definition of Total Supply differs from CoinGecko. While CoinGecko includes all tokens regardless of ownership, we net out tokens permanently burned and uncreated, ensuring Total Supply reflects the true amount of tokens that exist and can impact valuation.
At the moment, most investors looking at $HYPE will see two very different numbers depending on the data provider:
However that figure is likely overstated, because CoinGecko doesn’t exclude all protocol-owned wallets (like Hyper Foundation, Community Grants and the Assistance Fund). In practice, many of those tokens aren’t actually in the market yet, so the “true” circulating number should be lower.
The challenge is that these differences can swing valuations by billions of dollars. Without clear standards, two people can look at the same token and come away with very different impressions of its size.
This is exactly why we need Outstanding Supply and a Smarter Circulating Supply. Outstanding Supply for tokens gives us a standard that’s both transparent and comparable to stocks.
Outstanding Supply and a smarter Circulating SupplyDefinition: All tokens that have been created (minted), subtracting burns. You can simply think of it like Issued Shares in stocks.
Total Supply = Max Supply - Uncreated Tokens - BurnsOutstanding Supply (New Metric)Definition: All tokens that exist today, except the ones the protocol itself is still holding (foundation, DAO, Labs, or locked distribution contracts). We exclude tokens held by the protocol holdings because they are like treasury shares in stocks. They exist but are not owned by outside investors. Only tokens in external hands reflect true ownership, liquidity, and market value. You can simply think of it like Outstanding Shares in stocks.
Outstanding Supply = Total Supply - Total Protocol HoldingsWhere:
Circulating Supply (Revised Metric)Definition: Tokens that are available to trade now. This excludes locked tokens, insider/team holdings under vesting and illiquid treasury wallets. You can simply think of it like Floating Shares in stocks.
Circulating Supply = Outstanding Supply - Locked Tokens
In stocks, no one has to guess how many shares exist or how much supply could hit the market. That clarity builds trust.
Crypto needs to be the same. If the industry wants institutional trust, it needs institutional-grade transparency. With Outstanding Supply and a smarter Circulating Supply, investors finally get the same transparency.
ZJ here, research and data engineer at Artemis! You can also find me on X and linkedin here.
Thanks for reading! Want to connect with me? Feel free to email me at zj@artemisanalytics.xyz.
Big thanks to the folks who gave feedback and sharpened this piece:
Cosmo Jiang at Pantera for helping refine the “Outstanding Supply” definition
Eric Wallach at Pantera for pressing on “why does this matter” framing and making sure the valuation implications came through
Katie Talati at Arca for pointing out edge cases like buybacks and grants that needed to be explicitly addressed
And of course, the Artemis team.
Jon Ma for helping frame Outstanding Supply in plain economic terms and tying it back to equity comparisons
Alex Weseley for pushing the team to make Supply metrics consistent across all projects and keeping the methodology transparent.
BDR Team - Ben Stamm, Akhil Vajjhala and Kaviish Sethi
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