To explain, and this continues the discussions in two other threads linked below, if you sum the market cap of the S&P 500 (45T) with US bonds/treasuries/etc (36T) and US homes (50T), you get 131 trillion USD. But US M3 (broad money) is only 21 trillion USD, less than any one of those three figures. Oh, but you might say, there is global demand for all three of these, so we need to use global M3. In that case, global M3 would be approximately 80 trillion USD, still far less than the market caps for these other assets, and also less than any two of those asset classes combined, which does not account for many many other goods. There is no contradiction. It means that "market cap" is a kind of index for comparison and does not imply that there is a corresponding amount of money actually available. Money is its own good with its own supply and demand. Exchange takes place on the margins of both the money and the good or service. I'm not saying market cap is not a useful tool for comparision. But there is no contradiction between a market cap of over 21 million Bitcoin and there only being 21 million Bitcoin available, even in a world where all the money were replaced with Bitcoin. At the same time, yeah, Microsoft is overrated no matter how you figure it, but that's a different statement for a different reason. Previous discussions are and View quoted note →