I actually think this calculation methodology for "market cap" is flawed. The whole notion of market capitalization comes from the equity markets. It's calculated based on the total number of shares issued by the corporate treasury -- not the public float of an equity. (Public float means the number of shares that are released into public markets).<p>When a public company does a secondary offering and releases more shares, that clearly doesn't result in an increased market cap. The market already knew that those shares existed, even if they weren't publicly traded yet, and things are priced accordingly.<p>The convention for BTC and cryptocurrency in general seems to be to calculate market cap based on the total number of BTC that have been mined so far (~13mm). That's like the float. I'd argue that we should be using 21mm to calculate BTC market cap, since that's effectively what the "bitcoin treasury" has authorized. (To follow the anology, I think of BTC as doing a small secondary offering every 10 minutes.... but the market already knows this information and prices things accordingly. It should not result in an increasing market cap every time a new block is mined).<p>Accordingly, I'd argue that this is a more accurate representation of market cap (view by total supply): <a href="http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/market-cap-by-total-supply/" rel="nofollow">http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/market-cap-by-tota...</a><p>You can find a lot of stocks in the market with a very low float. For example, Pandora and LinkedIn only IPO'ed ~9% of the total shares.[1] i.e. The float is ~9% but the market cap is calculated based on the full 100% shares that are authorized by the treasury, even if they are held by the company and not publicly traded. The market still knows that those shares exist and can be released to the market at a future date.<p>[1] <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303936704576399821664370538" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230393670...</a><p>disclaimer: i work on the ripple project