While I understand what you're saying, it's pretty clear what is meant is "$X worth at the price they currently sell for". When there's a story about an object in space made of gold worth 100s of trillians of dollars, nobody believes it would really sell for that much if we captured it and mined all the gold; because the value of gold would plummet based purely on it's existence.
But I agree with you that it would be put into a court document as "it cost us this much" for the full amount, vs the amount they were likely to ever be able to sell (and can't, now that everyone got it for free, so the value is $0)
The market cap is unambiguous, a more correct estimate of "how much to buy all the shares?" is situational and would just distract from getting the point across.
Not really. If a company were to manufacture a substantially large number of shares out of nothing (no additional investment money or other value entering the company) then the market cap would not go up. It would stay the same and per-share value would go down.
The market is mostly reasonable about who can and will sell their shares. If a big mover does sell a lot of their shares at once, the price will fall. Most big holders will slowly sell off shares for this reason.
In the other direction, itβs also understood that the cost to acquire all shares of a company is more than the market cap of a company. This is why you see acquisition prices being significantly higher than the last funding round valuation, or public shares popping on announcement of an acquisition attempt.
But I agree with you that it would be put into a court document as "it cost us this much" for the full amount, vs the amount they were likely to ever be able to sell (and can't, now that everyone got it for free, so the value is $0)