Circulating Supply
Plain English
The number of coins currently available and actively being traded in the market. Not all coins are released at once - some are locked up or haven’t been created yet. Think of it like shares of a company that are actually available to buy and sell.
Technical
The amount of tokens publicly available and circulating in the market, excluding locked, vested, burned, or otherwise inaccessible tokens. Critical metric for calculating market cap. Differs from total supply (all minted tokens) and max supply (theoretical maximum that can ever exist).