Indeed - the real market cap is much less than what coinmarketcap shows which is just the total 100Bn XRP - the 69% that Ripple Labs holds. If Larsen, Britto and McCaleb were to sell their XRP into the market, then the price would plummet. The true market cap is more like $160m or 1/3 of that currently showing on coinmarketcap.
I addressed
founder allocation concerns earlier in this thread. it may be useful info if you are not aware of more recent developments.
In general, I think market cap is a pretty useless metric. It all comes down to how specific sites decide to calculate market capitalization, and valid arguments exist regarding the flaws and trade-offs of all the varied methods.
It seems you are suggesting that the coinmarketcap.com homepage calculates XRP market cap according to the full ~100Bn XRP supply. If you check the
Available Supply column, you will see coinmarketcap.com is using solely the number of XRP
not held by Ripple Labs.
If you would like to see the marketp cap calculation result based on all XRP (total supply), you can view that by switching to the
Total Supply display, by using the
Currencies tab dropdown. I believe coinmarketcap.com is already showing the 1/3rd value of the total supply that you believe is most accurate.
Coinmarketcap.com
previously used the full ~100Bn XRP (total supply) for its calculation, which has led to frequent confusion.
I understand that Coinmarketcap used to use the full ~ 100Bn XRP supply for the calculation, which was ridiculous since most of it wasn't available for trading. I am saying that the current 31Bn used by Coinmarketcap is also off by a full 66% since ~ 20Bn XRP are locked up with 3 owners and not available for general trading. Sure, one could argue that the 7% held by Satoshi isn't available for general trading as well, but I'll take the 7% held by Satoshi vs the 66% of the 31Bn held by 3 people any day when comparing real market caps.
That's why I say that the ~$480m market cap should really be closer to the $160m that actually trades hands and isn't locked up (even temporarily).