The market cap is a total sum of the price of an asset times the number of unique asset pieces that exist.
which is exactly the same analogy i used with my having 5 of something worth 100 each.
I understand what a market cap is. And i am arguing that it does have some value in comparing 2 different things. even if it is 2 things that have nothing to do with each other. how much value? again...i'm not making investing decisions on it, but its simply a little nugget of information within a much bigger picture. that's it. a small tool in a huge tool box.
Thank god! Someone with a brain that can take over. Im leaving this thread. Its making my head hurt.
ahh my apologies...and here i thought we were having a somewhat intelligent conversation/debate about something...
because we all have much to gain in the crypto world from personal attacks and slinging mud (cant speak for anyone else, but thats why I found my way to this forum...a healthy, productive exchange of ideas, opinions, knowledge, etc) ...good example from a 'legendary member'
Legendary member means we've been around for a long time and RNGesus blessed us with a good roll on getting the status, provided it is not always changing at 740 activity now.
The thing with your statement that you can use the market caps to compared to each other somehow is fallacious at best, there is nothing to compared beyond getting a rough idea of just how much money an asset is worth in a certain asset at a snapshot in time. It can change very rapidly and this goes doubly so for small cryptos, since they can go up and down off of the results of just a few buy or sell orders. It's a representative factor of the last order value * the number of assets.
Have you ever wondered by a majority of price aggregation and average platforms do not include the market cap? Because it is something not worth paying attention to in the grand scheme of things.
Thinking there is some sort of arbitrary "It should be worth x% of Bitcoin" is a terrible means of considering investments in cryptos, since there is no revenue to go off of like a traditional stock with a company behind it. Even as a "jumping point". There is no value in looking at those metrics in these environments like there is in FOREX or otherwise.
EDIT: Weird-ass formatting
Fantastic post!!! THIS is productive. Again, I am new to the crypto currency world...but my education and trading experience in other tradable markets goes back nearly 20 years. So, yes I am a 'newbie' on here...but I am confident my experience can be of some minimal value as ideas get bounced around.
Back to the topic...seeing that I am new to cryptos... can you help me understand why you feel there is no value in crypto world versus any other value that tool may (or may not) have in other asset classes, like FOREX? Because, when I am looking at a market cap..the information i am seeking is EXACTLY how you classified it: simply a rough idea of an assets 'value' at any given snapshot in time. Why would the value of knowing that information be different for a coin versus a currency or stock or whatever?
The more research i do, the more and more i realize the crypto trading world (and just in general) is much different than other markets. I am finding there are many different things to take into consideration as i start to put some small money at work here...especially in very short term scalping trades. granted, these coins may not have revenues like GOOG or whatever...but still...the price of the coin is still its perceived value at any given moment in time. In that sense...why is it any different than any other asset class? All the formalities and technical stuff aside...should a short term trader care how its fundamentally different than a stock or futures trading?
(and just for full disclosure for whatever its worth..i own small amounts of BTC and ETH as well as a scalping position in BNB/USDT hoping for decent bounce off upward trending support line on 6hr chart)