[nosuchthing]

Those "market cap" numbers are utter garbage and completely inaccurate.

How is that number calculated?

The actual market rate is only determined by active users who send a buy order though an exchange. If there's no demand, the price instantly tanks to 0 in a few seconds - the exchanges guarantee nothing.

What's the demand behind BTC? Speculators?

What happens when the speculators cash out because something better comes along?

[Buge]

The number is calculated by number of bitcoins in existence * price of bitcoin.

Same as the stock market.

[mrep]

Not that I think it is worth near that much cause it is 99% speculators, but I would assume it is based on current market price * current BTC withstanding just like how stocks market cap is based (subbing BTC with shares).

> What happens when the speculators cash out because something better comes along?

It'll crash super hard but I still think this is fine metric.

[zdkl]

The demand seems to be "institutionalised" since a couple of years. VC-like money coming in through cryptocoin service startups and disposable income from rich nerds and richer finance types looking to beat the market. It'll pass and/or stabilise.

It's the notion of what is stable here that's novel and interesting