Actually, supply & demand determine the price, marketcap is just an overall project value based on latest known price.
What is 'Market Capitalization'
Market capitalization refers the total dollar market value of a company's outstanding shares. Commonly referred to as "market cap," it is calculated by multiplying a company's shares outstanding by the current market price of one share. The investment community uses this figure to determine a company's size, as opposed to using sales or total asset figures.
BREAKING DOWN 'Market Capitalization'
Using market capitalization to show the size of a company is important because company size is a basic determinant of various characteristics in which investors are interested, including risk. It is also easy to calculate. A company with 20 million shares selling at $100 a share would have a market cap of $2 billion.
To keep it simple it is all about supply and demand. At the beginning of a project like XBY for example the investors (the early adopters) invest by the information they are getting, like what is the purpose of the project. You try to get these investors by explaining them what you are trying to accomplish and hope to create demand this way. As the project progress you get another type of investors, these will use market capitalization to determine if it is worth investing in the project. So in the end if the early adopters have invested enough and the project is progressing nicely you will create demand for the other type of investors. So it's just about supply and demand but you have different types of investors that will only invest when they have certain information.