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Bitcoin has about $133 bil marketcap. NYSE symbols with the twice (2X) this marketcaps according to Yahoo Finance: UNH (UnitedHealth Group) mcap: $262 bil, tr

Bitcoin has about $133 bil marketcap. NYSE symbols with the twice (2X) this marketcaps according to Yahoo Finance: UNH (UnitedHealth Group) mcap: $262 bil, trading volume: $1.2 bil KO (COCA-COLA) mcap: $231 bil, trading volume: $0.6 bil MRK (MERCK) mcap: $225 bil trading volume: $0.7 bil Therefore, for Bitcoin to be tradeable as similar stocks it has to show $0.25-0.5 bil for $133 bil mcap or $0.5-1.0 bil for $250 bil mcap. Binance alone showed $0.3 bil today but the volume is usually $0.5-1 bil. I don't think that Binance is wash-trading, so all this FUD is mostly due to a lack of understanding.

mikeyouse 7y ago
There's no such thing as a "market cap" for Bitcoin - seriously, give me a definition of "market cap" for Bitcoin that makes any sense at all compared to something like the future value of cash flows from UNH equity.
- account73466 7y ago
  Not my definition but the accepted one is price times number of bitcoins mined so far. Of course by selling 1% of all bitcoins you would clean all order books. However, George Soros used only a few billions to bet against the British pound.
  - mikeyouse 7y ago
    Which is nonsense since so many bitcoins have been lost and there is no underlying asset that owning a bitcoin grants you access to.
    - darawk 7y ago
      Sure, but that just makes Bitcoin's market cap smaller, and therefore its expected trading volume relative to similar assets even smaller, and therefore the original commenter's point even more accurate.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    > Not my definition but the accepted one is price times number of bitcoins mined so far. Right, but that's essentially a lazy re-definition of the term. I get that it's a bit wordy to always say, "the current total value of all bitcoins is $X billion", but market cap is specifically about the total value of a security's outstanding shares. If people want bitcoin to be treated seriously as a currency, they should stop using terms that explicitly refer to non-currencies. To put it another way, no one would reasonably talk about something like the "market cap of the Euro"[0], so why would you do that for something else claimed to be a currency? [0] Entertainingly, when I search "euro currency market cap", most of the results that come up are related to cryptocurrency.
    - account73466 7y ago
      I guess that one of the reasons for this notation is because Bitcoin is not yet a currency in its common sense (e.g., freely used within a country to be exchanges for products and services) but a speculative asset.
    - Melting_Harps 7y ago
      > To put it another way, no one would reasonably talk about something like the "market cap of the Euro"[0], so why would you do that for something else claimed to be a currency? Oh, but they do: https://www.dailysabah.com/finance/2017/12/06/bitcoin-renews-all-time-high-surpasses-ruble-and-sterling-to-become-6th-largest-currency-by-circulation https://www.dailysabah.com/finance/2017/12/06/bitcoin-renews... And while Market Cap may be on its surface misleading, its mere semantics, and is really in reference to what you've described; its just that as you said, its a currency and itself cannot have a strict Market-Cap but its a succinct way to describe the totality of its valuation for all issued satoshi's--which again, is misleading because of the 21 Million, its likely several million are lost forever.
      - kelnos 7y ago
        Er, the article you linked does not even once use the term "market cap" to refer to anything. Semantics are important. Often perception and optics are just as important as reality. Something that's been a hard lesson for me several times in life...
- whack 7y ago
  The market cap for UNH isn't calculated using future cash flows. The market cap for any security, by definition, is price-per-security * number-of-securities. Similar valuations also exist for gold-funds, which also have no cash flows. You can argue that asset prices should be derived from future cash flows, and hence, both Bitcoin and gold should be almost worthless. But that has nothing to do with the formula for computing any entity's market cap
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > The market cap for any security, by definition, is price-per-security number-of-securities Market cap is an equities concept. The market value of a series of bonds isn't the issuance's market cap. The notional value of all options on a symbol is only useful to operations/settlement folk. For Bitcoin, "market cap" is meaningless. It's too thinly and opaquely traded. Better would be flow of funds, i.e. value of new money flowing into and out of the system. Put another way, if you bought all the shares in a company, you'd have the company. If you bought all the bonds of a company, you'd own the debt. The aggregates have meaning. If you bought every Bitcoin in existence (or dollar, for that matter), you would have nothing.
    - account73466 7y ago
      >> It's too thinly and opaquely traded That claim about "thinly" contradicts the numbers given in my post above.
      - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
        > That claim about "thinly" contradicts the numbers given in my post above Most Bitcoin volume is non-economic [1]. Some of it is fraudulent printing. Some of it is wash trading. That said, I don't doubt Binance's figures. The problem with taking a few trades and multiplying it by the outstanding coinage goes back to the aggregate being meaningless. [1] https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-nysearca-2019-01/srnysearca201901-5574233-185408.pdf https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-nysearca-2019-01/srnysearca2...
- toomim 7y ago
  Market Capitalization: The amount of capital allotted an asset in the market. This can be computed as number-of-coins x price-per-coin.
  - tuesdayrain 7y ago
    This could result in the common misconception that market cap is equal to the influx of money into an asset. E.g. market cap increasing by 5bil doesn't mean that 5 billion worth of currency was invested into it.
    - account73466 7y ago
      It could. However, you average Joe crypto hodler from reddit understands this phenomenon, e.g., after reading about Tether & friends.
- justinmeiners 7y ago
  (number of bitcoin) * (price per coin).
shepardrtc 7y ago
I have a hard time believe its anything other than market makers providing the illusion of trades. Have you seen the price swings? If there was real volume and real transactions asides from trades, how would such insane swings be possible?
- account73466 7y ago
  I don't have a crystal ball to claim I know what happens but swings are often due to futures trades and exchanges interested in liquidating longs and shorts. I understand why exchanges are interested in wash trading but I don't know why market makers would provide any illusion since each transaction costs in order of 0.075% of its value.
  - floatingatoll 7y ago
    Wash transactions are cheap compared to the rewards they gamble will occur.
    - account73466 7y ago
      Could you please provide an example?
      - floatingatoll 7y ago
        https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/markets/nyse-arca/disciplinary-actions/2016/Electronic%20Transaction%20-%20Arca%20Decision.pdf https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/markets/nyse-arca/disci...
  - shepardrtc 7y ago
    I believe market makers are paid by exchanges to provide liquidity.
    - account73466 7y ago
      What you are referring to exists in regular stocks markets but not in cryptomarkets (at least, when we talk about relatively reputable exchanges). Take Binance as the largest crypto-exchange. Market makers are the ones who put buy or less limit orders. Market takers are the ones who put market order to "eat" limit orders. Market markers are not paid to provide liquidity. However, their fees decrease from, e.g., 0.075% per trade to say 0.030% per trade if they trade millions $ per month.
hammock 7y ago
Bitcoin is not a stock though. Forex markets do $5 trillion in daily volume against an $80 trillion base. For example.
- account73466 7y ago
  Forex market are highly leveraged so it is better to compare them to Bitcoin Futures then. Bitcoin Futures have about $7 bil of volume today for $133 bil market cap (so the factor is similar). Obviously, trillions and billions are not on the same scale and I have no clue whether the factor should remain the same.
  - NovemberWhiskey 7y ago
    > Forex market are highly leveraged Not really: spot and outright forwards are about $3tn of daily turnover in the OTC forex markets; with forex swaps amounting to about another $3.2tn. There is about $100tn notional of OTC forex derivatives outstanding, but the actual total market value is only about $2.2tn. Exchange-traded forex futures and options have barely $170bn of daily average turnover of notional. (all numbers courtesy of the Bank for International Settlements)
- bitreality 7y ago
  I mean, Bitcoin isn't a fiat currency, either. Banks trade forex for completely different use cases than people/orgs trade Bitcoin.
nabla9 7y ago
MZM velocity of money of USD is 1.3
- account73466 7y ago
  Today, Bitcoin has little to no adoption as a currency, that is true.
  - joshfraser 7y ago
    Yeah it's not the digital cash we were promised. But it's great as a store of value, censorship-resistant money, and one of the fastest and cheapest ways to do cross-border remittances.
    - oarsinsync 7y ago
      > it's great as a store of value BTC/USD is down 18% in the last 30 days. That's not a great store of value. > censorship-resistant money Correct, but only within its own economy. The moment you want to convert to "real" money (fiat), you're out of luck > and one of the fastest and cheapest ways to do cross-border remittances Depends on which borders you're talking about. Within first world western countries with similar monetary policies, TransferWise is generally cheaper and quicker. Within the EU, SEPA fits that bill too. (Disclaimer: I am long bitcoin)
  - nabla9 7y ago
    Correct. Bitcoin is mainly a hoarding and speculation asset.
spookthesunset 7y ago
> I don't think that Binance is wash-trading Given most of these exchanges are completely unregulated and typically go to great lengths to conceal their identities.... you know they aren't wash-trading how exactly?
- account73466 7y ago
  I don't say I know, I say that I think. It remains a possibility that they are wash-trading.
  - spookthesunset 7y ago
    > It remains a possibility that they are wash-trading. I'd say they all have every single incentive to wash-trade, front-run, and otherwise cheat the hell out of their system to their advantage. After all, they are completely unregulated and almost always operate well outside any jurisdiction who would care to go after them. I'd say you'd be silly to assume they aren't doing ultra-shady crap.
    - account73466 7y ago
      The trade-off is the following. If serious traders don't make any profit on a platform but make it on another one, they will leave. That is the primarily reason for an exchange to steal money at a reasonable rate instead of doing some super greedy stuff.
      - spookthesunset 7y ago
        Their target isn’t “serious traders” like folks on Wall Street. Most bitcoin people think they are the “serious traders” but in fact they are the very rubes that get scammed by these exchanges. With most things bitcoin you are either the one doing the scamming or the one being scammed. Often you can even play both roles! It is what keeps the ecosystem interesting!
    - buboard 7y ago
hinkley 7y ago
All three of those stocks pay dividends. Doesn't that tend to reduce volume vs float? Also, if you're going to compare Bitcoin to stocks, does that mean you accept that Bitcoin's value is in speculation and not as a currency?
- account73466 7y ago
  Returns of top S&P 500 stocks would be around 6-8% annually when computing over say 10-20 years. When dividends are included, you end up with something like 10-12%. However, I don't think it impacts volume by more than some one digit percentage (when average over the whole year) since it happens very occasionally. >> does that mean you accept that Bitcoin's value is in speculation and not as a currency? Today, it is a speculative asset.
- natmaka 7y ago
  Bitcoin seems intrinsically 'neutral' to me, its 'value' (as a tool) is/becomes what its users do with it.
thawaway1837 7y ago
Except those other market caps are companies, where you’re discussing changing ownership, whereas BTC is a currency, whose only point is to be traded.
noxer 7y ago
Markecap is a meaningless value for a "currency". Comparing it to the marketcaps of companies is even more meaningless. And comparing Bitcoin trade volume with stock trade volume is another meaningless thing. It's very common in the crypto space to use all kinds of correctly calculated nonsense.
- account73466 7y ago
  Bitcoin is not a currency in its common sense, it is a speculative asset. Call everything meaningless is pretty meaningless as well. >> Comparing it to the marketcaps of companies is even more meaningless Wrong. >> And comparing Bitcoin trade volume with stock trade volume is another meaningless thing. Wrong.
  - noxer 7y ago
    It doesn't matter if it' a currency in your definition or if it isn't. Gold is also not a currency by todays definition. Still no one care about the mcap of gold an certainly no one compares it to mcap of companies because gold isn't a company and neither is bitcoin. >Wrong. Good argument

mikeyouse 7y ago

There's no such thing as a "market cap" for Bitcoin - seriously, give me a definition of "market cap" for Bitcoin that makes any sense at all compared to something like the future value of cash flows from UNH equity.

account73466 7y ago
Not my definition but the accepted one is price times number of bitcoins mined so far. Of course by selling 1% of all bitcoins you would clean all order books. However, George Soros used only a few billions to bet against the British pound.
- mikeyouse 7y ago
  Which is nonsense since so many bitcoins have been lost and there is no underlying asset that owning a bitcoin grants you access to.
  - darawk 7y ago
    Sure, but that just makes Bitcoin's market cap smaller, and therefore its expected trading volume relative to similar assets even smaller, and therefore the original commenter's point even more accurate.
- kelnos 7y ago
  > Not my definition but the accepted one is price times number of bitcoins mined so far. Right, but that's essentially a lazy re-definition of the term. I get that it's a bit wordy to always say, "the current total value of all bitcoins is $X billion", but market cap is specifically about the total value of a security's outstanding shares. If people want bitcoin to be treated seriously as a currency, they should stop using terms that explicitly refer to non-currencies. To put it another way, no one would reasonably talk about something like the "market cap of the Euro"[0], so why would you do that for something else claimed to be a currency? [0] Entertainingly, when I search "euro currency market cap", most of the results that come up are related to cryptocurrency.
  - account73466 7y ago
    I guess that one of the reasons for this notation is because Bitcoin is not yet a currency in its common sense (e.g., freely used within a country to be exchanges for products and services) but a speculative asset.
  - Melting_Harps 7y ago
    > To put it another way, no one would reasonably talk about something like the "market cap of the Euro"[0], so why would you do that for something else claimed to be a currency? Oh, but they do: https://www.dailysabah.com/finance/2017/12/06/bitcoin-renews-all-time-high-surpasses-ruble-and-sterling-to-become-6th-largest-currency-by-circulation https://www.dailysabah.com/finance/2017/12/06/bitcoin-renews... And while Market Cap may be on its surface misleading, its mere semantics, and is really in reference to what you've described; its just that as you said, its a currency and itself cannot have a strict Market-Cap but its a succinct way to describe the totality of its valuation for all issued satoshi's--which again, is misleading because of the 21 Million, its likely several million are lost forever.
    - kelnos 7y ago
      Er, the article you linked does not even once use the term "market cap" to refer to anything. Semantics are important. Often perception and optics are just as important as reality. Something that's been a hard lesson for me several times in life...
whack 7y ago
The market cap for UNH isn't calculated using future cash flows. The market cap for any security, by definition, is price-per-security * number-of-securities. Similar valuations also exist for gold-funds, which also have no cash flows. You can argue that asset prices should be derived from future cash flows, and hence, both Bitcoin and gold should be almost worthless. But that has nothing to do with the formula for computing any entity's market cap
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > The market cap for any security, by definition, is price-per-security number-of-securities Market cap is an equities concept. The market value of a series of bonds isn't the issuance's market cap. The notional value of all options on a symbol is only useful to operations/settlement folk. For Bitcoin, "market cap" is meaningless. It's too thinly and opaquely traded. Better would be flow of funds, i.e. value of new money flowing into and out of the system. Put another way, if you bought all the shares in a company, you'd have the company. If you bought all the bonds of a company, you'd own the debt. The aggregates have meaning. If you bought every Bitcoin in existence (or dollar, for that matter), you would have nothing.
  - account73466 7y ago
    >> It's too thinly and opaquely traded That claim about "thinly" contradicts the numbers given in my post above.
    - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
      > That claim about "thinly" contradicts the numbers given in my post above Most Bitcoin volume is non-economic [1]. Some of it is fraudulent printing. Some of it is wash trading. That said, I don't doubt Binance's figures. The problem with taking a few trades and multiplying it by the outstanding coinage goes back to the aggregate being meaningless. [1] https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-nysearca-2019-01/srnysearca201901-5574233-185408.pdf https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-nysearca-2019-01/srnysearca2...
toomim 7y ago
Market Capitalization: The amount of capital allotted an asset in the market. This can be computed as number-of-coins x price-per-coin.
- tuesdayrain 7y ago
  This could result in the common misconception that market cap is equal to the influx of money into an asset. E.g. market cap increasing by 5bil doesn't mean that 5 billion worth of currency was invested into it.
  - account73466 7y ago
    It could. However, you average Joe crypto hodler from reddit understands this phenomenon, e.g., after reading about Tether & friends.
justinmeiners 7y ago
(number of bitcoin) * (price per coin).

shepardrtc 7y ago

I have a hard time believe its anything other than market makers providing the illusion of trades. Have you seen the price swings? If there was real volume and real transactions asides from trades, how would such insane swings be possible?

account73466 7y ago
I don't have a crystal ball to claim I know what happens but swings are often due to futures trades and exchanges interested in liquidating longs and shorts. I understand why exchanges are interested in wash trading but I don't know why market makers would provide any illusion since each transaction costs in order of 0.075% of its value.
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  Wash transactions are cheap compared to the rewards they gamble will occur.
  - account73466 7y ago
    Could you please provide an example?
    - floatingatoll 7y ago
      https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/markets/nyse-arca/disciplinary-actions/2016/Electronic%20Transaction%20-%20Arca%20Decision.pdf https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/markets/nyse-arca/disci...
- shepardrtc 7y ago
  I believe market makers are paid by exchanges to provide liquidity.
  - account73466 7y ago
    What you are referring to exists in regular stocks markets but not in cryptomarkets (at least, when we talk about relatively reputable exchanges). Take Binance as the largest crypto-exchange. Market makers are the ones who put buy or less limit orders. Market takers are the ones who put market order to "eat" limit orders. Market markers are not paid to provide liquidity. However, their fees decrease from, e.g., 0.075% per trade to say 0.030% per trade if they trade millions $ per month.

hammock 7y ago

Bitcoin is not a stock though. Forex markets do $5 trillion in daily volume against an $80 trillion base. For example.

account73466 7y ago
Forex market are highly leveraged so it is better to compare them to Bitcoin Futures then. Bitcoin Futures have about $7 bil of volume today for $133 bil market cap (so the factor is similar). Obviously, trillions and billions are not on the same scale and I have no clue whether the factor should remain the same.
- NovemberWhiskey 7y ago
  > Forex market are highly leveraged Not really: spot and outright forwards are about $3tn of daily turnover in the OTC forex markets; with forex swaps amounting to about another $3.2tn. There is about $100tn notional of OTC forex derivatives outstanding, but the actual total market value is only about $2.2tn. Exchange-traded forex futures and options have barely $170bn of daily average turnover of notional. (all numbers courtesy of the Bank for International Settlements)
bitreality 7y ago
I mean, Bitcoin isn't a fiat currency, either. Banks trade forex for completely different use cases than people/orgs trade Bitcoin.

nabla9 7y ago

MZM velocity of money of USD is 1.3

account73466 7y ago
Today, Bitcoin has little to no adoption as a currency, that is true.
- joshfraser 7y ago
  Yeah it's not the digital cash we were promised. But it's great as a store of value, censorship-resistant money, and one of the fastest and cheapest ways to do cross-border remittances.
  - oarsinsync 7y ago
    > it's great as a store of value BTC/USD is down 18% in the last 30 days. That's not a great store of value. > censorship-resistant money Correct, but only within its own economy. The moment you want to convert to "real" money (fiat), you're out of luck > and one of the fastest and cheapest ways to do cross-border remittances Depends on which borders you're talking about. Within first world western countries with similar monetary policies, TransferWise is generally cheaper and quicker. Within the EU, SEPA fits that bill too. (Disclaimer: I am long bitcoin)
- nabla9 7y ago
  Correct. Bitcoin is mainly a hoarding and speculation asset.

spookthesunset 7y ago

> I don't think that Binance is wash-trading Given most of these exchanges are completely unregulated and typically go to great lengths to conceal their identities.... you know they aren't wash-trading how exactly?

account73466 7y ago
I don't say I know, I say that I think. It remains a possibility that they are wash-trading.
- spookthesunset 7y ago
  > It remains a possibility that they are wash-trading. I'd say they all have every single incentive to wash-trade, front-run, and otherwise cheat the hell out of their system to their advantage. After all, they are completely unregulated and almost always operate well outside any jurisdiction who would care to go after them. I'd say you'd be silly to assume they aren't doing ultra-shady crap.
  - account73466 7y ago
    The trade-off is the following. If serious traders don't make any profit on a platform but make it on another one, they will leave. That is the primarily reason for an exchange to steal money at a reasonable rate instead of doing some super greedy stuff.
    - spookthesunset 7y ago
      Their target isn’t “serious traders” like folks on Wall Street. Most bitcoin people think they are the “serious traders” but in fact they are the very rubes that get scammed by these exchanges. With most things bitcoin you are either the one doing the scamming or the one being scammed. Often you can even play both roles! It is what keeps the ecosystem interesting!
  - buboard 7y ago

hinkley 7y ago

All three of those stocks pay dividends. Doesn't that tend to reduce volume vs float? Also, if you're going to compare Bitcoin to stocks, does that mean you accept that Bitcoin's value is in speculation and not as a currency?

account73466 7y ago
Returns of top S&P 500 stocks would be around 6-8% annually when computing over say 10-20 years. When dividends are included, you end up with something like 10-12%. However, I don't think it impacts volume by more than some one digit percentage (when average over the whole year) since it happens very occasionally. >> does that mean you accept that Bitcoin's value is in speculation and not as a currency? Today, it is a speculative asset.
natmaka 7y ago
Bitcoin seems intrinsically 'neutral' to me, its 'value' (as a tool) is/becomes what its users do with it.

thawaway1837 7y ago

Except those other market caps are companies, where you’re discussing changing ownership, whereas BTC is a currency, whose only point is to be traded.

noxer 7y ago

Markecap is a meaningless value for a "currency". Comparing it to the marketcaps of companies is even more meaningless. And comparing Bitcoin trade volume with stock trade volume is another meaningless thing. It's very common in the crypto space to use all kinds of correctly calculated nonsense.

account73466 7y ago
Bitcoin is not a currency in its common sense, it is a speculative asset. Call everything meaningless is pretty meaningless as well. >> Comparing it to the marketcaps of companies is even more meaningless Wrong. >> And comparing Bitcoin trade volume with stock trade volume is another meaningless thing. Wrong.
- noxer 7y ago
  It doesn't matter if it' a currency in your definition or if it isn't. Gold is also not a currency by todays definition. Still no one care about the mcap of gold an certainly no one compares it to mcap of companies because gold isn't a company and neither is bitcoin. >Wrong. Good argument