Bitcoin Forum

It’s a 100 billion market- how would 1 billion added to that cause a 80% drop ?
could someone explain me  ???

because that 100 billion isn't trading

What matters is how much real volume is being traded at the time of the dump. And right now the volume is really low.

Despite the best estimates based on declared volume at around $2-$4Bilion, the real volume is no higher than around $0.8-$1.6 Billion. That's what's actually being traded daily on average, and it's possibly even lower since there's no real regulation on this. So that $1 Billion is probably worth more than what the entire market is really trading on the day.

That's why it only took under $500 million worth of Bitcoin for the recent $1k drop in price. Which may have been triggered with really only $200 million. But we're talking about a Billion. Even in a best case scenario if most of them don't sell, and only a third of them sell, that's still 30% of a Billion. They would have to dilute all their trades over a long period of time, just to have the price stay steady. Otherwise, in our best case scenario, you'd still be looking at a drop in price between $500-$1,000, assuming the price drop doesn't trigger a further panic.

TL;DR:

best case scenario: most don't sell, the few that sell dilute their sales over a long period of time and the price stays steady for while.

worst case scenario: Most sell, and almost half a billion gets sold within a few days, causes a panic, the price goes down by almost $2k.

Because market cap is an artificial number.

I can create some trash ICO and make a million tokens for it. I sell a single one of those tokens for $10, and hey, my project now has a market cap of $10 million. The guy I sold it to then sells it on for $5 and my market cap is now $5 million, even though we've only moved $10 and I still have 999,999 worthless tokens sitting in a wallet.

Market cap is only part of the picture. You need to look at the trading volume too.