I somehwat agree with you liqio, about the 'fake' market cap from ripple.  market cap is a function of the liquid assets being traded.  all instruments will have some portion which is illiquid, such as founders holding them.  this is true for stocks and Bitcoin too.  arguably for ripple there would be a much greater percentage that's illiquid and so the numbers would inflated by multiples.  also, a secondary result is that with such a small actual trading volume, it is much cheaper to prop up the price and maintain a larger cap. not sure if all that's what you meant.

consider what would happen if everyone who's bought into the neucoin prelaunch dumped the coins back at break even and neucoin foundation bought them.  then there's no real volume, but they could fake it and set any price they want.  obviously this is an extreme example, but the point is the smaller the actual market, the more room they have to play games with the price and market cap.