How would total supply influence things when we’re running away from it (we are expanding it).
Exchanges can allow you to have ‘virtually unlimited’ currency (being it crypto or whatever) and even defy the limitations set by the creators of the assets.
My point is one can now trade cryptocurrencies on platforms that don’t really have any in their vaults. - that’s really hard to digest.
Uhm actually, all of exchanges before being publicly opened and running, they need Volume of a certain pair. In example, ABC Exchange supports only BTC/USDT pair. In order to have transactions and trading running, there must be people nor orders that run on both sides of the pair. One must have USDT that want to buy BTC, and one must be a BTC that wants to be sold onto USDT. Now the volume is important as it dictates how much there is in a pair. If that would be 0, then there are no people that is trading in that pair and in that platform. Now, if ABC Exchange is a starting exchange, AFAIK they must provide volume first. How? They can simply use a huge amount of money then make orders. Then the more they get users onto their platform, the more they can grow their market's volume.
Also, don't confuse yourself too much. Some analogy is already simple unless you question too much without further pausing to understand it