How scarcity prices are calculated
A transparent look at the data source, formula, and design decisions behind Same Scarcity's supply-adjusted cryptocurrency rankings.
The Core Formula
Every cryptocurrency listed on Same Scarcity receives a normalized metric called the "scarcity price." This value represents the hypothetical price per unit if the coin's entire market capitalization were distributed across Bitcoin's circulating supply.
Where market_cap is the coin's current market capitalization in USD (price multiplied by its own circulating supply), and btc_circulating_supply is Bitcoin's current number of mined coins (about 20 million in late 2026, read live from the same data feed).
Bitcoin's own scarcity price equals its actual market price, by definition. Every other coin's scarcity price is proportional to its market cap relative to Bitcoin's supply constraint.
How the Data Gets to You
Same Scarcity has no database and no backend. The page is a static file, and the calculation runs in your browser.
- When the page loads, your browser requests the top 500 coins by market cap from CoinGecko's public
/coins/marketsendpoint (two pages of 250). - Wrapped and bridged tokens and most USD stablecoins are filtered out, so each asset appears once. A "hide stables" toggle removes the remaining pegged assets, such as gold tokens.
- Bitcoin's circulating supply is read from the same response, and every coin's scarcity price is calculated from it.
- The table re-fetches every 60 seconds while the page is open.
Data Points per Coin
| Field | Source | Description |
|---|---|---|
current_price | CoinGecko | Current USD price |
market_cap | CoinGecko | Price x circulating supply |
total_volume | CoinGecko | 24-hour trading volume in USD |
circulating_supply | CoinGecko | Coins currently in circulation |
scarcity_price | Calculated | Market cap divided by BTC circulating supply |
Why Bitcoin's Supply?
Bitcoin's 21 million hard cap is the most widely recognized scarcity constraint in cryptocurrency. Using it as the denominator creates an intuitive baseline: if a coin's scarcity price is half of Bitcoin's actual price, that coin's network is valued at roughly half of Bitcoin's in market cap terms.
We use circulating supply rather than the theoretical 21 million cap because circulating supply reflects the coins that actually exist and participate in the market today.
Refresh Frequency
The page re-fetches data every 60 seconds. CoinGecko's public API caches its own responses for a short time, so figures can lag the market by a minute or two.
Limitations and Considerations
Scarcity-adjusted pricing is a normalization tool, not a valuation model. A high scarcity price does not mean a coin is overvalued, and a low one does not mean it is undervalued. The metric simply removes supply differences from the comparison.
Market cap itself has well-known limitations in cryptocurrency: it does not account for lost coins, locked tokens, or thin order books. Same Scarcity inherits these limitations from its source data.