What has to be true
for this to 10x?
Price targets are backwards. Start from the market cap you'd have to believe, divide by the supply that will actually exist by then, and see what price falls out. Dilution included, because it always shows up.
Target
Price ladder
A cap target is a claim about who buys and why. Before you believe it, name the flow: which buyer is forced or strongly incentivised to hold this token at that size, and what would stop them from renting it instead?
Compare, then decide
Three projects, same questions, same row. Most narratives survive a chart and die in a table. Flags compute themselves from what you enter.
Rows are editable. Everything stays on your device.
How to read it
Who's paid, who's waiting
Low ratio means most of the supply hasn't hit the market yet. It isn't automatically bad — it's a schedule you have to price. Under 0.4 with a live cliff is a headwind, not a bargain.
Business ≠ token
Revenue at the company or protocol level tells you the thing works. It tells you nothing about whether the token gets any of it. Separate the two lines every time.
The crossover
If issuance exceeds burn, holders are diluted no matter how good the story is. The question worth tracking is the date the two lines cross, and what usage level it requires.
Every unlock is
a seller with a date
The date isn't the risk — the absorption is. A tranche worth three days of volume, held by someone whose cost basis is a fortieth of spot, doesn't need a reason to sell. Enter the schedule and see the float curve you're actually buying into.
Use a boring-day volume, not a spike. The point is what the book looks like when nobody's watching.
Basis is roughly what they paid, as a multiple below spot. A 40× basis holder is in profit at any price you'd call a crash.
Circulating float
Releases
What the numbers mean
The absorption test
Tranche value ÷ daily volume. Under one day, the market swallows it. Over five, it can only clear at a discount — and the people who read the docs start positioning weeks early.
Not all sellers are equal
Ecosystem funds drip out over years. Investors with a 3-year fund clock and a 40× basis do not. Team tokens are somewhere in between and depend entirely on whether they still like the job.
The dilution you agreed to
If float doubles over your horizon, the cap has to double for price to stand still. That's the hurdle before any thesis gets to be right.
Name the number,
or there's no thesis
Issuance is set by the protocol. Burn is set by usage. Every burn-token bull case reduces to one testable sentence: usage reaches X by date Y and the lines cross. This solves for X and Y.
The mint side
Decay is the taper: 10% means next year issues 10% fewer tokens than this year. Set 0 for flat emissions.
The burn side
If fees are denominated in dollars, a rising price burns fewer tokens for the same real usage. The mechanism fights its own chart. Set this above zero to see how much.
Mint vs burn · tokens/yr
Reading your own output honestly
Usage needed, at today's price
Mint × price ÷ burn share = the annual fee volume that makes burn equal mint right now. Divide by current volume and you have the multiple. If that multiple is 40×, say "40×" out loud before you say "deflationary".
The date is a growth assumption
The crossover date is entirely a function of the growth rate you typed. It is not a finding. Run it at half your number — if the thesis only survives at 80%/yr compounded for five years, that's what you're actually underwriting.
Burn theatre
Treasury buybacks funded by selling the same token elsewhere are a circle, not a sink. Flip the source selector and the model stops crediting it, because it shouldn't.
Peak supply is the real dilution
Crossover doesn't undo what came before it. Supply keeps climbing until the lines meet, and that peak is the base every holder is diluted against — even in the bull case.
The delete the token test
Eight questions. If the protocol still works after you delete the token, you're holding a memento, not a claim. Answer honestly — the score is only worth what your inputs are.
Supply is a promise.
Demand is a bill.
Tokenomics is not a pie chart. It's the answer to one question: why would anyone need to hold this, and for how long? Everything below is a way of interrogating that.
The four levers
How new tokens appear
Emissions, staking rewards, team and investor vesting, ecosystem funds. Every one is future sell pressure with a date attached. Read the schedule, not the summary.
How tokens disappear or lock
Burns, fee payment in-token, collateral, staking with real slashing risk. A sink only counts if it scales with usage — a burn nobody triggers is decoration.
Forced vs. voluntary
Mandatory demand (you cannot use the network without the token) is durable. Voluntary demand (governance, points, vibes) evaporates in a drawdown. Grade every token on which one it has.
Who holds the float
A small float with concentrated ownership prints beautiful charts and terrible exits. Ask what percentage can be sold tomorrow, and by whom.
Burn-versus-mint equilibrium
The single most useful frame for any fee-burning token. Issuance adds tokens at a rate set by the protocol. Burns remove tokens at a rate set by usage. Net supply change is just the difference.
Two traps. First, burn theatre: buying back with treasury funds raised from selling the same token is a circle, not a sink. Second, elective switches: a fee mechanism that governance has to vote on isn't revenue, it's a proposal. Check whether the quorum has ever passed anything.
Value accrual: the token vs the business
The most expensive mistake in this market is pricing a good business as if the token were equity in it. Ask three questions in order:
| Question | What a strong answer looks like | What a weak answer looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Does the protocol earn? | Fees paid by parties who'd pay them in fiat if they could | Emissions recycled as "revenue" |
| Does the token touch the fee? | Fee must be paid or settled in the token; not swappable away | Fees in stables, token is a governance wrapper |
| Does that flow to holders? | Burn, or a distribution that survives the legal review | Flows to a foundation, "future" switch, discretionary |
Unlocks: the only calendar that matters
Price impact is rarely on the unlock date — it's in the weeks before, as the people who know the schedule position ahead of the people who don't. What you want to know: the size of the tranche relative to daily volume, the cost basis of who receives it, and whether they have a lockup after the lockup.
Reading a supply chart in 60 seconds
Cliff shape means one entity got everything at once. A long linear ramp means somebody thought about it. A ramp that starts steep and flattens is front-loaded pain. And if allocations sum to more than 100% once you include "ecosystem", "reserve" and "treasury", the deck was made by marketing.
Positions are hypotheses
Each of these has a condition that makes it work and a condition that kills it. If you can't say both out loud, you're not running the strategy — you're just exposed to it.
Sizing, plainly
Conviction is not a position size. The size is set by what you can be wrong about without changing your life. A useful floor: if a 90% drawdown in this position would alter a decision you'd otherwise make — a job, a move, a relationship — it's too big, regardless of how good the thesis reads.
Where retail actually loses
Not on bad picks. On position size after a good pick, on averaging into a broken thesis because the chart looks like the last time it worked, and on confusing time in the market with time in the wrong thing. Every one of those is a discipline problem wearing an analysis costume.
CT to compiler
From what a reply guy means by "ngmi" to what actually happens when Solidity hits the EVM. Search it, or filter by level.
Write it down or
you didn't think it
Long-form notes and drafts. A thesis you can't write in five paragraphs isn't a thesis yet — it's a feeling about a chart. Notes save to this browser.