> "All new forks initially inherit their parent blockchain’s market cap, regardless of their own merit, value, utility, initial uptake, use, liquidity, etc."
Forking a coin in no way assigns any monetary value to it. It can't even have a real market cap until it's price is set by market demands. The only part of market cap that gets carried over is the supply.
"...anyone who can trivially fork Bitcoin (and get their shiny new shitcoin listed on an exchange) to create an alt-coin with apparently equal valuation to BTC. This works at least for a time, until other longer-term market forces inevitably act to bring the new asset into a more realistic valuation"
Weird to mention that forking is trivial in the same sentence (and condition) as getting it listed on an exchange. Getting a coin listed on a legitimate exchange is extremely non-trivial. And again it would not have equal valuation. It has no valuation until the market demands it.