Altcoin Treadmill
How much of the growth in altcoin market cap is higher prices — and how much is simply new supply?
Where Altcoin Market-Cap Growth Comes From
Monthly change in market cap, split into price at constant supply, dilution from new supply of existing coins, new listings, returners, rank changes, data breaks and exits. The parts add up to the change exactly. Circulating supply as reported by CoinMarketCap, group sums only.
Methodology
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What is measured
A coin group's market cap is price times supply. When it rises, there are two possible reasons: the coins are worth more, or there are more coins. The treadmill separates the two, month by month. The name comes from the picture: new supply and new coins need fresh capital all the time just to keep prices where they are — like a treadmill you have to walk on to stay in place.
The parts
For every coin in the universe at both month ends: price = last month's supply × price change; dilution = today's price × supply change. If supply jumps by more than 50 % in a month (migration, redenomination, data error), the coin's whole change goes to "data breaks" — otherwise a redenomination would look like a price jump. Coins new to the universe: anyone already in it during the past 365 days is a returner; anyone never in it and added to CoinMarketCap at most 365 days earlier is a new listing; everyone else is a rank change. Coins leaving the universe are exits. All parts together add up to the change in market cap exactly; the residual is below 1 USD.
Price index at constant supply
The lower chart chains each month's price change at the previous month's supply — as if no new supply had been added. The composition is that of each month, so dead coins count as long as they were in the universe. The gap to the reported market cap is what dilution and new listings (net of exits) contributed.
Who counts
The universe is the first 2,000 coins by CoinMarketCap rank on each day; that covers practically the whole market cap. Altcoins are everything except Bitcoin and Ether, without stablecoins, wrapped, staked and bridged variants and tokenized securities — the same definition as the Others index. Bitcoin and Ether stand alongside as their own groups. Circulating supply is the figure reported by CoinMarketCap; projects report it themselves, and locked holdings are not delimited the same way everywhere.
Why this is not a signal
The page describes where the market cap got its change from. It does not say what comes next, and it has no threshold above which anything would be "bullish". A treadmill ratio (inflow divided by capital need) is deliberately missing: it needs an inflow from outside — stablecoin growth or ETF flows — otherwise it would only restate the same numbers. Not investment advice.
Data & access
Source: CoinMarketCap (historical daily listings, circulating supply as reported by CMC), from December 2022, one point per month. Only group sums are published. The same numbers are served by the knowledge object altcoin_treadmill/GLOBAL via the REST-API and the MCP tool arena_get_knowledge.
Altcoin Treadmill — Where Altcoin Market-Cap Growth Comes From
Data as of 2026-10-31 · updated daily
From 2022-12-31 to 2026-10-31 the altcoin market cap changed by +316.1 bn $: price at constant supply −12.4 bn $, dilution +137.9 bn $, new listings +171.9 bn $.
- Price index at constant supply (start 100)
- 140.5
- Reported altcoin market cap (start 100)
- 253.8
- Dilution from new supply of existing coins
- +137.9 bn $
- New listings
- +171.9 bn $
- Exits
- −86.6 bn $
- Months
- 46
- Data through
- 2026-10-31
- Source
- CoinMarketCap listings/historical — circulating supply as reported by CMC, first 2,000 coins by CMC rank per day
Each month the change in altcoin market cap is split into its parts: price change at the previous month's supply, dilution (additional supply of coins that already existed, valued at the current price), new listings, coins returning to the listing, rank changes, exits and data breaks (supply jumps above 50 % in a month). The parts add up to the change exactly.
The price index at constant supply shows what the altcoin market cap would have done without new supply and new listings. Altcoins exclude Bitcoin, Ether, stablecoins, wrapped, staked and bridged tokens and tokenized assets. Circulating supply as reported by CoinMarketCap; only group sums are shown. Descriptive, not a signal.