The market cap delle crypto supera il PIL della Francia

In these days the market cap of crypto has surpassed the GDP of France. 

Although in reality they are not comparable values, the comparison at least gives an idea of the order of magnitude of the bull crypto market. 

The crypto market cap reaches a new milestone: GDP of France surpassed

First of all, it should be remembered that the market cap of cryptocurrencies is a purely theoretical figure, which does not provide a real indication of the true market value.

In fact, it is only the result obtained by multiplying the number of tokens in circulation for each crypto by the latest market price of that cryptocurrency, and summing together the results of the multiplications of all known cryptocurrencies. 

The fact is that only a portion of cryptocurrencies is actually on the markets, while the rest is elsewhere or in some cases even unavailable. 

For example, in total there are about 19.8 million Bitcoin, but on the crypto spot markets there are only about 2 million. There are another approximately 1.2 million in the wallets of ETFs, and another million in the wallets of companies or governments.

Even at least 3, or perhaps 4 million, BTC are actually lost forever due to the loss of private keys, so the calculation of Bitcoin’s market capitalization made starting from the 19.8 million existing BTC is certainly overestimated. 

However, there is no other way to calculate it accurately. 

The historical trend of the crypto market cap

According to the data calculated by TradingView, the all-time peak for the total crypto market capitalization was recorded yesterday above 3.070 trillion dollars.

Note that the peak of 2021, in November, was 3.010 billion, so yesterday’s peak was only slightly higher than that of three years ago. 

This is due to the fact that, while Bitcoin is at its peak, the vast majority of the other major cryptocurrencies are not. 

2024 opened with a crypto market cap of only 1.6 trillion dollars, rising to 2.7 trillion by March. 

Therefore, when the price of Bitcoin marked the new all-time high at $73,800, the overall capitalization of the crypto markets was still significantly lower than the highs of 2021. 

Things changed on November 6, the day of the declaration of Trump’s victory in the 2024 USA presidential elections. 

Suddenly, the crypto market cap jumped above 2.5 trillion, after having fallen below 1.7 trillion for a brief moment in August, and since then the growth has practically not stopped. 

The GDP of France and the crypto market cap compared

The Gross Domestic Product of France in 2023 was 3.013 billion dollars. 

This is a value similar to the peak of the crypto market cap in 2021, but lower than the current crypto market cap. 

It should be noted, however, that these two data points are actually not comparable. 

First of all, the GDP is a flow, while the market cap is a stock. 

That is, the GDP measures the wealth produced over the course of 12 months, while the market capitalization measures only a value at a single precise moment. 

This means that to make a comparison, one should at least calculate the annual average of the market cap to have greater confidence in the result of the comparison. However, even doing so, the comparison between a flow and a stock should be considered incorrect. 

But there is a second reason that leads to excluding the possibility of comparing these two data. 

In fact, while the market cap is a purely theoretical figure, obtained only from a simple mathematical operation, the GDP is a real figure, meaning a real measure of the amount of wealth expressed in dollars produced by a country in twelve months. 

The order of magnitude

Therefore, stating that the crypto market is worth more than France would be completely wrong. 

It should also be noted that the Paris stock exchange alone has a market capitalization of more than 3.100 billion dollars, so the overall value of French assets is by far higher than the theoretical value of the crypto market. 

It is important to remember that the crypto market is global, while on the Paris stock exchange, essentially only national companies are listed. 

Although the calculation of the crypto market cap is fundamentally flawed, as it does not take into account the unspecified number of lost tokens, it at least gives us an idea of the order of magnitude. 

The curious thing is that the order of magnitude of the crypto market is comparable to that of the French GDP, but also to the Paris stock exchange. 

With these numbers, the crypto market begins to have to be considered important worldwide, even though, for example, the main stock exchange, the NYSE in New York, capitalizes 28,000 billion dollars, which is almost ten times the global crypto market.