A Look At Cryptocurrencie's Market Cap In Comparison

[RivAngE]

True facts I researched on my own,
Keep in mind that the purpose of this post is to put cryptocurrencies in a perspective with other types of investment.

Right now, the total marketcap of Bitcoin is about 1/4 of just Intel's shares.
Bitcoin's marketcap is also 60% (almost half) of Nvidia's and just 6.75% of Apple's.

Lastly, the market cap of the global stock-market, that is the amount investors have poured into companies's shares worldwide.
In the end of 2017 the global stock-market had an incredible amount of investments which summed $79.23 TRILLIONS, so the crypto-currencie's marketcap is only 0.13% in comparison!

If we'd make this into a graph, it'd look like this,


There are a lot to think about when viewing these numbers... for example (1) How little money is yet invested in crypto-currencies by investors, and yet we reached 20k per BTC. (2) While the US stock market which is making up 40% of the world's market cap is having trouble, guess where at least a small amount of investments will go. (3) Can you really call the price hike we had in December a bubble which burst?

Ofcourse I'm not expecting crypto's market cap to be equal to the stock market but a 0.13% market cap of just one country's stock market is ridiculously too little!
If only 1% of that amount of money go to cryptocurrencies, the prices will hike almost 800% !
There are also many other kind of investments like fiat currencies, precious metals, oil and other commodities which I could not sum up.


What are your thoughts? Did you know that crypto-coins are still in such a low demand compared to the classic kind of investments? Do you think the above comparisons are valid?


My source for the global stock-market is this: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/CM.MKT.LCAP.CD?end=2017&start=2000
and my source for the crypto's market cap is this: https://coinlib.io/

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[Wilhelm]

(1)
Bitcoin is still fighting for it's place as a store of value.
Regulations and acceptance by governments is required for more stable base.
Bitcoin is currently a highly speculative (and highly volatile) product so prices will fluctuate heavily. $20k was way to high and is now corrected/popped.

(2)
The USA is not the center of the world. There are much more people in the rest of the world.
There are more countries that might allow for Bitcoin to gain acceptance before the USA.
So there is more potential for adoption outside of the USA.
India for example has 1.21 billion people that can potentially invest.

(3)
A bubble bursting is caused by a false backing.
A correction is a minor price drop due to it's real value being different to the stock price.
I think Bitcoin is both. We have the inexperienced investors causing a bubble every few months/years to pop. The professional investors are more relaxed and correct the price during non-bubble periods.
Bitcoin is the closest/easiest thing to "Get rich quick".

[RivAngE]

...

I totally agree! I also believe that the reason BTC and a few altcoins with great ideas and strong teams are very cheap, is because there's not a good regulation in place to protect investors from market manipulation.

As for your 2nd point, I apologise for a mistake in my post, I corrected it now.
The numbers I pulled from worldbank.org are for the stock market all around the globe! At first I had put the US stock's data but then I updated the prices, I remember also changing the words to reflect that but I don't know why it was not saved!

[davis196]

Don't compare cryptocurrencies with stocks.Do you think that having a coin is the same thing as having a share of stocks in some company?
The main problem is that the cryptocurrencies still don't have a clear purpose.
They are just pump&dump tools and nothing more.What makes them useful?Decentralization and anonymouty?
99,9% of the people don't care about that.They want nothing but profits.That's why all the coins will remain pump&dump tools.
And don't tell me that bitcoin is a store of value.After the current dump,it isn't....

[Wilhelm]

No problem.

Bitcoin has so much untapped potential yet it will have to redefine economics as we know it. Changing this paradigm will take a lot of time (many years).
Current economics are built around the ever increasing world population and the ability to print more money.
If only Bitcoin would exist a simple hack could ground a country which is an unacceptable risk.

Therefore I believe Bitcoin should initially only replace international banking (like cash and reserve currency) and not inland banking.

[talkbitcoin]

i generally dislike comparing market capitalization of cryptocurrencies (including bitcoin) with market capitalization of companies. it is just wrong specially when it comes to altcoins.

all i need to know is that bitcoin has a lot of "untapped potential" as the other user pointed out. and we still have a lot of way to go before we even reach a small portion of it.
we aren't at 50% adoption, nor 40% nor 10%,... we are in less than 1% adoption right now. and that is one of the biggest reasons for continuation of these huge ups and retraces.

[RivAngE]

Don't compare cryptocurrencies with stocks.Do you think that having a coin is the same thing as having a share of stocks in some company?
The main problem is that the cryptocurrencies still don't have a clear purpose.
They are just pump&dump tools and nothing more.What makes them useful?Decentralization and anonymouty?
99,9% of the people don't care about that.They want nothing but profits.That's why all the coins will remain pump&dump tools.
And don't tell me that bitcoin is a store of value.After the current dump,it isn't....

You mean that stocks have a purpose? Unless you're a major shareholder who has a voting right, then the only purpose of stocks are for profits, which again should make them a tool for dump and bump... which is what we see (though some DON'T see it) happening in Wall Street.

At least cryptocurrencies have more usages, let me name a few...

• BTC has the potential to be a store of value, especially for countries with more corrupt governments than the average corruption we all have to face.
• XRP is the cheapest and faster payment method.
• Ethereum is nice to hold if you use DAPPS (Decentralised-Applications), have you seen "Axis Infinity"? It's like Pokemon in blockchain! Or the AAA TCG title "Gods Unchained"? That's the future of gaming.
• ARK has the potential to make the blockchain technology accessible to businesses and smaller teams, with easy to use "plug-in-like" tools.
• A young project named XDNA and its platform, XDNA Foundation, is focused on using the blockchain as a mean for improving the world, providing both the tools and the funds to support charity actions and even smaller cases presented by people. (the said platform is in open beta testing)

I can accept that stocks and cryptocurrencies are not the same thing, but not because stocks are more useful! It's the other way around!
However both are means of investment and that's why I though it'd be interesting to compare the two.

[Vit83]

Need to see statistics about the quantity of transactions, not market cap. There are lots of blockchains that have more than 100 million of capitalization but no usage at all.

[RivAngE]

Need to see statistics about the quantity of transactions, not market cap. There are lots of blockchains that have more than 100 million of capitalization but no usage at all.

Thanks! I knew that but didn't know how to explain it in a simple way and since those "dead" coins don't account for much of the overall market cap, I decided to ignore this detail.

A dead project can have issued many coins, but it keeps a relative "high" price because no one is trading it. I'm sure that in some cases, if someone was to sell 5% of the total amounts of coins in circulation, the market cap would fell by more than 50% because there would be no buyers!

So the market cap of most altcoins under the top 100 are virtual and theoretical, but this enhances my point a bit more: The cryptocurrencies as a mean of investment is very cheap compared to the traditional investments.
I'm sure that if correctly regulated and then proved to be safe to invest, a lot of money will pour in which will make the 6-digit figures possible for Bitcoin in a couple of years.

[RivAngE]

I've found an even better visualisation: http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-visualization-2017/
It's impressive how little cryptocurrencies are worth in comparison with everything else, only silver is valued lower (which is even more impressive for me!)

Huge debt by the way!

[BitcoinHodler]

• XRP is the cheapest and faster payment method.

no it is not because you are comparing apples and oranges. if you want to compare decentralized payment systems then don't include centralized ones in your list. compare Ripple with its counterparts such as VISA and PayPal which are similarly centralized and are companies.

[leea-1334]

There are two types of researchers as I have been taught. One type has a problem that he is trying to solve, and then tries to experiment with all different theories to find something that can solve the problem. The other type has also a problem, but he already has the solution in his head. He then proceeds to experiment with the theories that can help him get the solution and keeps trying until he has the solution he is looking for,,, no solutions that he was not thinking of.

In crypto, what I find is the 2nd type. Where we make all comparisons until we find the one we like. No offense to OP, this is just only my observation.

[RivAngE]

• XRP is the cheapest and faster payment method.

no it is not because you are comparing apples and oranges. if you want to compare decentralized payment systems then don't include centralized ones in your list. compare Ripple with its counterparts such as VISA and PayPal which are similarly centralized and are companies.

You should read the whole post and the one in which I replied to.
I just pointed a few CRYPTO-related projects I know well and why those are more useful to the users and investors than just buying stocks. VISA and PayPal are not cryptocurrencies.

But I should have stated that better, sorry!