| "Market cap" is the most-quoted vanity metric of the cryptocurrency market. A more reasonable measure of the value of a cryptocurrency would be the following: if it were possible to create an infinite number of currency units, how much USD/EUR/etc. could be earned by selling everything into the market? In other words, the more reasonable metric is the sum of all (cryptocurrency) buy orders. If we use the Bitcoin/USD market as an example, the four most liquid USD exchanges (using data from https://bitcoincharts.com) are --
in descending order -- Bitstamp, Coinbase, itBit, and Kraken. The sum of all USD buy orders for these exchanges is $43 million (22583567.85[1], 9551529.73[2], 9310393.07[3], 1679397.01[4], respectively). I'm not sure what this figure is for Ethereum, but my guess is that it's around 1% of that of Bitcoin -- whereas Ethereum's market cap is around 50% of Bitcoin's. EDIT: On GDAX/Coinbase alone (https://www.gdax.com/trade/ETH-USD) it's possible to sell Ethers for over $12 million USD. So I guess I was wrong about the 1% figure. Although I believe $43MM USD for Bitcoin is an underestimate. [1] https://bitcoincharts.com/markets/bitstampUSD_depth.html [2] https://bitcoincharts.com/markets/coinbaseUSD_depth.html [3] https://bitcoincharts.com/markets/itbitUSD_depth.html [4] https://bitcoincharts.com/markets/krakenUSD_depth.html |