Price is a vanity number; cap is the truth
'It's only $0.01, it could 100x to $1!' ignores supply. At a huge supply, that $1 would need a market cap bigger than Bitcoin. Sanity-check with the price-at-market-cap calculator.
Market cap, and what it doesn't say
Market cap = price × circulating supply. It's the standard size ranking, and it answers exactly one question: what the market currently values the circulating float at. It does not measure money invested (caps rise without new money when thin volume marks up the price) and it does not measure liquidity (a $500M cap coin might absorb only $2M of selling before −20%).
The useful comparisons: cap-to-volume ratio flags illiquidity — daily volume under 1% of cap means big holders can't exit without moving the market. Cap versus fully diluted valuation flags dilution — a $100M cap with $1B FDV means 90% of supply is still coming.
Sanity anchor for targets: every "this coin will 50×" claim implies a market cap. Multiply it out and compare against real assets. A 50× on a $200M coin is $10B — the entire valuation of a top-30 project, needing billions in real inflows, not a trending hashtag.