A memecoin trading at $0.0004 is not cheap, and a memecoin at $12 is not expensive. The price alone tells you nothing, because it depends entirely on how many tokens exist. The number that tells you what a token is worth is its market cap, and on memecoins you should read it before anything else.
Price is a unit, not a value
A token's price is what one unit costs. A token's market cap is what all of them are worth together:
Market cap = price × supply
Two tokens make the point. Token A trades at $0.0004 with 1 billion tokens: its market cap is $400,000. Token B trades at $12 with 10,000 tokens: its market cap is $120,000. Token A is the bigger coin, by more than 3x, even though its price looks like a rounding error.
This is why "it's only $0.0004, it can easily go to $1" is the most expensive sentence in memecoins. At 1 billion tokens, $1 means a $1B market cap.
Why FDV is the number to use on memecoins
There are two market caps. Circulating market cap counts only the tokens in circulation. Fully diluted value (FDV) counts every token that exists, minus the ones burned.
On a large project with vesting schedules, the difference matters. On a memecoin, circulating supply usually cannot be known from the chain: nothing on-chain says which wallet is "circulating" and which is not. So the honest number is FDV:
FDV = price at the trade × (total supply − tokens sent to burn addresses)
When a memecoin terminal says "market cap", it almost always means this FDV. In our own Robinhood Chain data, every number labelled market cap is FDV computed this way, and we checked it against DexScreener's FDV on the 20 most traded tokens of a day: median ratio 1.00x.
Where the money actually sits
Reading by market cap also changes where you look. On one day of Robinhood Chain trading (20 to 21 September 2026, $567.9M of memecoin volume), tokens between $100k and $10M of market cap took 48% of the volume, on only 2,113 tokens. The bonding curve, where new coins are born, had 10,740 tokens but only 6.6% of the dollars.
| Market cap at the trade | Share of 24h volume |
|---|---|
| Bonding curve | 6.6% |
| Under $100k | 11.0% |
| $100k to $1M | 25.3% |
| $1M to $10M | 22.7% |
| Above $10M | 33.3% |
Many launches, little money at the bottom. Most of the money trades tokens that already have a market cap worth reading.
The supply tricks price hides
Because price depends on supply, anything that changes supply changes what a price means:
- Huge supplies make a token look cheap. 1 trillion tokens at $0.000001 is still a $1M market cap.
- Burns reduce supply. A token whose dev sends half the supply to a burn address has half the FDV at the same price.
- Concentrated supply makes a market cap fragile. If a handful of wallets hold most of the supply, the market cap is a number nobody can actually sell into.
That last point is why market cap is necessary but not enough. A $400k market cap where 30% of the supply sits with the dev and a family of linked wallets is not the same token as a $400k market cap spread across hundreds of real buyers. See how to check if a memecoin is a rug.
How fast market cap can move
On 19 September 2026, URANUS, one of Robinhood Chain's 20 most traded tokens that day, traded at a $3.65M market cap on its first swap of the day and $22.8k on its last. A 160x collapse inside 24 hours. At that speed, a price chart hides the scale of the move. A market cap going from millions to thousands does not.
How to use this before you buy
- Convert any price target into a market cap. "Can this go to $1?" becomes "can this reach a $1B market cap?".
- Compare the market cap to the token's age and its holders. A 20-minute-old token at $5M is a different bet from a 3-day-old one.
- Check who holds the supply before trusting the number.
- Use market cap for your targets and your exits, not price.
Our market cap calculator turns any price and supply into a market cap and back.
FAQ
Is a low price a sign a memecoin is cheap?
No. Price depends on supply. A token at $0.0004 with 1 billion tokens has a $400,000 market cap, larger than a token at $12 with 10,000 tokens.
What is the difference between market cap and FDV?
Market cap usually counts circulating supply, FDV counts every token that exists minus burned ones. On memecoins circulating supply cannot be read from the chain, so terminals use FDV.
Why do memecoin terminals show market cap instead of price?
Because market cap is comparable across tokens and price is not. A market cap tells you the size of the bet, a price only tells you the unit.
Can a memecoin with a big market cap still be risky?
Yes. If most of the supply sits with the dev or a few linked wallets, the market cap is fragile: those holders can sell into buyers and the market cap can collapse in minutes.
Dylan Breugne
Co-founder and COO of Otomato. Leads growth, marketing, and partnerships across the DeFi ecosystem.