Maybe you’re new to cryptocurrency and blockchain market, or maybe even though you don’t consider yourself to be tech-savvy, you like to learn more about NFTs, different cryptocurrencies, and DeFi projects; in either case, our weekly recap is for you!
I know! Cryptocurrency market and blockchain industry are full of jargon, and it may be hard to start learning all those terms and abbreviations. You may not even know where to start?
But what about a beginner-friendly article that would take you to markets each week, and by using recent market examples, explain complicated terms in an easy and understandable way?
That is exactly what you can expect from our Weekly Recaps.
With our Weekly Recaps, you can learn about different technical terms in an easy way, and understand all these abbreviations and terms that may sound strange to you right now!
Let’s start with one of the most common terms: MarketCap.
Top 10 Cryptocurrencies of the Week by MarketCap
You probably have heard that Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency in the world. But have you ever wondered what exactly does it mean? Does it mean Bitcoin has more users than others? or maybe it means that users are transferring more money using bitcoin?
To answer that, we have to talk about “Market Capitalization” or simply “MarketCap“.
MarketCap is the total market value of a cryptocurrency. Look at the chart below. Bitcoin has the biggest MarketCap, so it is at top of the list.
Source: CoinMarketCap.com
Remember that MarketCap is not the same as the market price. If you check CoinMarketCap’s cryptocurrency chart, you would see that the price of Tether (ideally $1) is less than BNB (almost $430). But Tether has a bigger MarketCap. How come?
Let’s see how MarketCap is calculated.
To calculate MarketCap, we have to estimate the number of coins or tokens currently available in the market. We call this the Circulating Supply. Right now, we have 78.5 billion USDT (Tether) tokens in the market. So the circulating supply of Tether is 78.5 billion. The circulating supply of BNB is almost 165.2 million.
Now that we have an approximation of the total number, we just have to multiply it by the current price to get the MarketCap. We have used CoinMarketCap as a resource here, but remember that different platforms may have a different estimation of the circulating supply and price. This would result in different MarketCap values. Although most of the time, the difference is quite small.
If we add the MarketCap of all cryptocurrencies in the market together, we will get an approximate value of the whole crypto market. We call this Total MarketCap. The Total Crypto Market Cap is currently $2.01T.
That’s it for this week. If you are wondering about those numbers on the chart, don’t miss our next Weekly Recap!
Summary
MarketCap: total market value of a cryptocurrency.
Circulating Supply: the approximation of the number of coins or tokens of a given cryptocurrency currently available in the market.
Total MarketCap: an approximate value of the whole crypto market.