You make a point, after the first 200,000,000 tokens are given out on those 5 days - the market cap is the token price * a billion. Token prices over a dollar equal a market cap higher than a billion. I don't think it is unreasonable to say that some of those won't be tradeing for 30+ dollars. That puts it on par with ETH market cap.
After those 5 days and the hype is at all time highs, it will be interesting to see how the price deals with 80% inflation over the course of a year.
I am not sure.
It just seems to be such a high profile ICO, that everyone will want a piece. I would expect investment funds buying up the majority of the first 200,000,000 tokens.
After that... You mention arbitrage in your post, which I find very interesting. Like you say, the limited supply might get bought away in seconds. This leaves the "ordinary" investor with no other choice than to buy in at a high price.
With what I know at this point I will try to buy some EOS for less than $10 a piece in the first five day window. After that, I expect the price to drop after 8 months, when there will be almost a billion tokens and all the little investors have gotten their piece. In that case I'll buy some more. If not, then at least I have the tokens from the first five day window.
Of course, this is nothing but speculation at this point.
< 10 a piece means a market cap of (EOS price) * 1 Billion -- so ~ 1-10 billion.
How will you buy at less than $10 a piece? It's logically impossible with their auction design because they give you no way to opt out if the actual price goes over $10. Now, $10 a piece means that they've raised $2 billion in 5 days - which seems a tad unlikely.
You are right, it's harder than I thought. But there must be some kind of counter right? Something like "so far we've raised ... ETH", which would give an indication of the price.
Yeah, that tells you the minimum price. But since you have no idea how much ETH will be contributed during that period, you have to contribute without knowing anything about the maximum price.
market cap is usually calculated by currently available tokens, not all possible. see zcash.
Yes. I am discussing in terms of this weird year long sale.