Bitcoin’s market capitalization has once again surpassed $1 trillion.
The investor Anndy Lian pointed out that $1 trillion is more than the combined market capitalization of Visa and Mastercard.
#Bitcoin's market cap ($1 trillion) is more than #VISA ($379 billion) and #Mastercard ($492 billion) combined. This is the power of #cryptocurrencies. pic.twitter.com/ng89wLy8Vk
— Anndy Lian (@anndylian) March 16, 2021
Visa and Mastercard are not actually currencies, but companies, and their market capitalization refers to their share price multiplied by the total number of shares.
According to Investing.com data, Visa‘s current market capitalization is about $477 billion, while Mastercard‘s is about $379 billion. Adding up the two market caps gives $856 billion, which is well below the $1 trillion market capitalization of Bitcoin.
Moreover, on CompaniesMarketCap.com, Visa’s market capitalization is said to be 492 billion, but in this case too, it is less than Bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s market capitalization
However, it is worth noting that the calculation of the market capitalization of Bitcoin suffers from a certain degree of uncertainty.
In fact, the trillion is obtained by multiplying the number of existing BTC (18,655,412) by the price of a single BTC (approximately $55,000), but in the reality of those 18.6+ million existing BTC a significant portion are considered lost forever, i.e. no longer circulating.
Unfortunately, no one knows exactly how many BTC are lost, so it is not possible to calculate the real market capitalization of circulating BTC.
Thus, the figure is an approximation, certainly by excess, but at least accurate.
All of this means that there are two reasons why comparing the market capitalization of bitcoin with that of shares of listed companies is not particularly meaningful.
However, it does serve as an order of magnitude against which to compare the overall value of bitcoin, which is now so high as to be otherwise difficult to understand.
It is worth noting that, according to CompaniesMarketCap.com, there are now only five companies in the world with a market capitalization greater than that of bitcoin:
- Apple,
- Saudi Aramco (Saudi Arabia’s state oil company),
- Microsoft,
- Amazon,
- Alphabet (formerly Google)
For instance, the Chinese Tencent and Alibaba, and the American Facebook, Tesla and Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffet’s company) have a lower market capitalization.
