(My personal thoughts — I might be wrong!)
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the cryptocurrency Sui (SUI), its market cap, its fully diluted valuation (FDV), and how much actual money is invested in it. I want to share my current understanding — but please keep in mind: this is just my view, and I might be wrong. I’m still learning, and maybe I’ve misunderstood some important aspects. Nevertheless, here’s how it currently seems to me.
(Note also that interestingly the same below arguments seem to be true for many many other cryptos also)
The Basics
- Market Cap: As of now, Sui’s circulating market capitalization is around $11.6 billion.
- FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation): If you count all tokens that will eventually exist (whether locked or unlocked), the total value at today’s price would be around $36 billion.
At first glance, this seems incredible — Sui is worth tens of billions! But looking closer, I started asking myself: How much real money has actually been invested into Sui so far?
Estimating Real Money Invested
After digging into early funding rounds, public sales, and exchange trading, a rough estimate is that only about $1–1.5 billion of actual dollars has been invested into Sui to date. (This estimate includes venture capital rounds, public sales, and ongoing secondary market buying.)
This means that the market cap is about 9–12 times larger than the real dollars invested. In crypto, this kind of multiplier is not unusual — but it’s worth understanding more deeply.
The Multiplier Effect (Not Just in Crypto)
When I say the market cap is many times larger than the real dollars invested, it’s important to clarify: this kind of multiplier happens in all markets, including traditional stocks.
Market cap is not a measure of money invested — it’s a measure of valuation based on the latest price multiplied by the total supply.
For example:
- If someone buys just one token at $3.58, the market assumes all tokens are worth $3.58.
- This tiny trade “sets” the price for billions of tokens — even if most tokens were acquired much cheaper or haven’t even been sold yet.
In stocks, it’s similar. A relatively small number of trades can set the price for the entire float of shares, and therefore affect the total market cap — even though far less money has changed hands.
The issue isn’t that multipliers exist — they always do. The question is how big they are and how much real capital is backing them up.
In crypto, multipliers can be much larger and more fragile, especially when:
- Much of the token supply is still locked
- Many early holders received their tokens at extremely low prices (or for free)
This creates a scenario where future unlocks might bring heavy selling — and the market may not have enough fresh capital to absorb it at current prices.
The Bigger Question: FDV vs Real Money
So, if the FDV is $36 billion, but only $1–1.5 billion of real money has come in so far, that means there’s a gap of about $24–25 billion between today’s market cap and the eventual total value of all Sui tokens.
To absorb that supply at today’s price, you’d need around $25 billion of new real money to come in — just to maintain current prices as those tokens unlock and hit the market.
And If the Price Rises?
If the price of SUI doubles or triples from here, the FDV increases even more — and so does the required amount of new capital to support it. The valuation gap widens, not shrinks.
Final Thoughts
Again, this is only my current view, and I might be missing something important. Maybe Sui’s adoption will grow massively. Maybe new investors and real-world users will eventually bring in tens of billions of dollars.
But right now, it seems to me that:
- There’s a large and growing gap between the real dollars invested and Sui’s fully diluted valuation (FDV).
- Unlocks and selling pressure could pose a major challenge if new demand doesn’t grow fast enough.
- Sui has not yet demonstrated a clear, compelling use case that would drive the kind of adoption needed to support a $36 billion valuation.
Without strong real-world utility or overwhelming new investor interest, it’s hard to see how the market could absorb so much future supply without serious downward pressure on price.
At the very least, I think it’s important for anyone looking at SUI to be very cautious about assuming current prices can continue to rise as more tokens continue to gradually unlock without more and more very significant buyers.
Disclaimer:
Nothing in this post is financial advice. I’m just sharing my own thinking as I try to better understand these markets. I could be wrong, and you should always do your own research.
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