I dont know..i feel it has SOME value. I see it as a kind of starting point? A very broad base from which to grow an opinion from? and using your analogy starships and automobiles... (going VERY hypothetical here, lol...) lets say the market cap of starships is 200B and autos 2 T .... starships' rough estimate of value is 10 % of the autos. But maybe i think starships could be as big as autos...or half as big. Using that broad opinion...i can look at market cap and see its at 10% the 'value' of autos...i think it should be 50% eventually... so, by using the market caps of the 2...i see perceived value in starships. Now, i certainly wouldnt make any investing decisions based solely on market caps of anything...but again...i see it as a jumping off point in certain situations.
I can use it now in my research on ETH...i think versus BTC it has more potential and room for growth...so i could look at the market caps of the 2, compare them, and get a very rough estimate of ETH value vs' BTC...then go from there.
Thats a good one, lets use ETH vs BTC. Can all of the people owning and using ETH also own BTC? Of course, so its usless to compare their market cap looking for growth potential because it could be the same people. It is possible that Bitcoin lovers hate Ethereum so none of them will ever use ether. So comparing market cap tells you nothing about growth potential because you will never steal bitcoin users over to Ethereum. Bitcoin is a currency or a commodity and Ethereum is a vehicle for smart contracts. They arent even used for the same thing. You cant compare the market cap and find out anything useful about potential growth because that would be like comparing the pharmaceutical industry to banana plantations. Just because the market cap of the pharmaceutical industry is more than banana plantations does not mean there is any room for growth in banana sales. Do you see what I mean?