Crypto Monetary Policies
We’ve been focused on cryptoasset supply curves since day one at Messari. For the past six months in particular, we’ve spent time building full liquid supply curves for the top ~100 assets. Our work has confirmed our initial intuitions: the variety of approaches taken across cryptoasset projects requires a more precise - if novel - way of defining and categorizing outstanding, liquid and circulating supply.
Our current Cryptoasset Supply Method defines five tranches of supply: maximum, diluted, outstanding, liquid, and circulating. Liquid and diluted (Y2050, Y+10) supplies are already included in our OnChainFX dashboard. We’ve been working feverishly behind the scenes to add maximum, outstanding, and circulating supply metrics for the rest of the top 100 assets. This framework is useful to understand the varied nature of cryptoasset supply management. But it doesn’t tell us how this observable supply, be it circulating, liquid or outstanding, has been or will be generated or destroyed over time.
Indeed, we can go one step further and classify and measure other aspects of supply:
- Launch Style (largely inspired by Nic Carter master's thesis, "A Cross-Sectional Overview of Cryptoasset Governance and Implications for Investors") defines how the first coins were issued and distributed.
- Initial Supply defines how many coins were initially issued and how these coins were allocated among different stakeholders (investors, founders and project operation budget, community airdrop, premined rewards).
- Emission type defines the monetary policy ruling the issuance of new coins for a given cryptoasset.
- Supply cap defines whether a cryptoasset supply is capped (maximum hard-coded supply) or uncapped (constant emission).
