What does circulating supply mean for crypto?

Since the market prices of a cryptocurrency coin cannot be directly affected by the part of the supply that is locked or reserved , the calculation of market capitalization normally considers only the circulating supply instead of the total supply.

Generally speaking, when the maximum supply is reached, there will be fewer coins available on the market . This is expected to create market scarcity, which may eventually lead to deflation conditions (or 0% inflation rates).

After reaching 21 million supply in circulation, Bitcoin will become more scarce and miners will be dependent on transaction fees, instead of block rewards . The miners will start earning more out of the transactions that happen on these blockchains than from the mining itself.

Circulating Supply is the total number of coins or tokens that are actively available for trade and are being used in the market and in general public . When a company creates a particular number of tokens, only a portion of it instead of the whole supply is made available for circulation.