The current supply of Bitcoin is limited to 14.5 million BTC, and access to the remaining 4.1 million coins mined to date has been permanently lost. This is the view of Coin Metrics analysts, who introduced a new metric of ‘real’ market capitalisation.
It is widely understood that whilst there are 18.6m #Bitcoin in existence, many are lost and not available to the market anymore.
That is why we’ve created free float supply, a more realistic representation of the market’s Bitcoin supply, 14.5mhttps://t.co/1oYf6sZbjB pic.twitter.com/170FDYZYoe
— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) February 5, 2021
As of writing, the real market capitalization of the first cryptocurrency, based on the coins actually available in freely circulating supply, is estimated at $553.9 billion. In analysts’ view, this figure ‘better reflects Bitcoin’s supply on the market’.
Researchers have not disclosed methodological details. The metric’s chart suggests they excluded coins that had remained unmoved for the last five years.
Coin Metrics calculated the real market capitalization for Bitcoin forks such as Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Gold. For these coins, the difference with the traditional notion of supply is even greater.
Applying our free float methodology to Bitcoin Forks — $BCH, $BSV, $BTG — generates an even starker difference in what is most commonly reported as the supply of these assets vs. what is more likely their supply in markets pic.twitter.com/1sHS8EWSXQ
— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) February 5, 2021
Experts conclude that the market capitalization of the first cryptocurrency exceeds its ‘fair value’ — $710.8 billion, according to CoinGecko, at the time of writing versus $553.9 billion. This could have implications for investors who use this metric as a guide, analysts say.
Earlier, Coin Metrics analysts presented an alternative metric for assessing the inventories held by Bitcoin miners.
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