There seems to be some confusion of the meaning of the term market capitisation as it applies to Bitcoin. It means
exactly the same thing as it does in any other market. In particular, it does
not represent the amount of money needed to "buy out" the entire market, which is impossible to measure by any means.
The definition only says "it is equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding". I was only laughing at how coins hoarded by miners are considered outstanding shares and how last trade price is considered share price. Is there any better place to discuss this as it doesn't related to this particular news post.
I don't think the term
outstanding shares means what you think it does. Outstanding shares are shares which have been acquired by, and are currently owned by, members of the public, as opposed to the issuer. Outstanding shares are
not limited to those which are actively being traded, they also include those which are being hoarded and those which have been lost (since the owner of lost shares could (theoretically) find them again). In the case of Bitcoin, outstanding shares are all the bitcoins that have ever been mined (currently a little over 9 million) out of the 21 million bitcoins "issued". There's nothing more to it than that. Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss this further, but I really don't see how there's anything further to discuss. Market capitalisation is a simple concept, perhaps too simple, since people seem to want to draw some kind of deeper meaning from it that just doesn't exist.
