FDV and circulating supply: why freshly listed tokens collapse after the exchange debut

A token becomes newly available on a large exchange, the price multiplies within days, and less than a week later it trades at half the level. Anyone who bought in after the headline is then sitting on a loss for which there is neither bad news nor an attack on the protocol as an explanation. The pattern repeats itself so regularly among new arrivals that it is worth taking its mechanics apart once. The trigger almost always sits in two numbers that stand right next to each other on every price page: the circulating supply and the total supply. A third figure follows from them, the fully diluted valuation, FDV for short. Anyone who looks these values up before buying can tell within a minute whether a genuinely scarce supply lies ahead, or a token whose supply side is still to come to market. That is the cheapest check available to you in the crypto market, and your broker charges nothing for it. This text explains the metrics first, works them through on a current case, places that case in a comparison with six further tokens, and shows at the end where you look the values up yourself and what German tax law makes of such a loss. Circulating supply and total supply are two differe...