I don't think market cap is really the best metric to look at for the meaningful "size" of a speculation-driven market like cryptocurrency. Admittedly, I'm far from the most financially-savvy, but it seems to me that more relevant figures are the number of people invested in the market and the percentage of people's income/wealth invested in it.
Actually, probably even more relevant (though more difficult to measure) than the absolute number of people invested in the market is some kind of measure of the "distribution" or "spread" of such people—something like distinct groups of people without direct connections to each other, since (positive) interest in cryptocurrency seems to cluster somewhat based on word of mouth networks.
Would actually be an interesting kind of study to do, finding the most useful ways to measure the "size" of a market of this nature. I would guess that there are probably at least 2-3 different measures of "size" that would be relevant to different kinds of effects on the market, but I'm afraid that's about where my understanding of all this ends.
Actually, probably even more relevant (though more difficult to measure) than the absolute number of people invested in the market is some kind of measure of the "distribution" or "spread" of such people—something like distinct groups of people without direct connections to each other, since (positive) interest in cryptocurrency seems to cluster somewhat based on word of mouth networks.
Would actually be an interesting kind of study to do, finding the most useful ways to measure the "size" of a market of this nature. I would guess that there are probably at least 2-3 different measures of "size" that would be relevant to different kinds of effects on the market, but I'm afraid that's about where my understanding of all this ends.