"There isn't enough money in the world for Bitcoin to reach (insert number)"

I keep seeing people say stuff like “Bitcoin will never reach $1M etc because that would make the market cap bigger than gold’s — there isn’t enough money in the world for that.”

That’s just… not how market cap works. Market cap has nothing to do with how much money “flowed into” an asset. It’s literally just current price × total supply. That’s it.

I'll give a very simplified example:

Let’s say there are 100 identical gold coins in existence.
I have one, and I sell it for $10 (which is the current lowest going price) on a “gold coin exchange.” That’s now the current price, so market cap = 100 coins × $10 = $1,000

Now imagine everyone suddenly realizes these coins are actually super valuable — they can’t be inflated, seized, etc. Holders don’t want to sell anymore unless they get way more for them.

The next person who decides to sell says, “Alright, I’ll sell mine for $10,000,” and someone actually buys it.

What happens? The market cap instantly becomes 100 coins × $10,000 = $1,000,000

But in reality, only $10,000 actually changed hands — not a million.

You don’t need a million dollars to create a million-dollar market cap. You only need one small trade at a higher price, because every other coin is now just being “valued” based on that last trade.

If you can trade even a tiny fraction of that coin, the effect is even bigger — the market cap can skyrocket with almost no actual money flowing in.

So when people say “there isn’t enough money in the world for Bitcoin to reach $1M,” they’re misunderstanding what “market cap” actually means. It’s a number derived from the marginal price, not the total money invested.