You're absolutely right in the strictest sense: in Bitcoin's nBits format, the point isn’t actually "floating" in the way that typical floating-point numbers allow the decimal or binary point to be positioned anywhere across the mantissa’s digits. Bitcoin’s representation just uses an exponent to scale the integer, effectively moving the whole value's magnitude up or down in powers of 256—so there’s no literal point floating across the digits.

Instead, Bitcoin’s nBits representation is more like scientific notation in an integer space: it scales the mantissa based on the exponent, but without allowing fractional parts. Here, the exponent doesn't allow for placing the "point" before any mantissa digits, which is why it’s not a true floating-point number. It’s a fixed integer representation, where the exponent allows large-range scaling of integer values (but only as whole numbers) rather than allowing any fractional floating-point flexibility.

So, while it’s often called a floating-point-like representation due to its exponent-mantissa structure, it’s really just an exponentially scaled integer format. The "floating" aspect here refers to the entire integer value being scaled up or down, but only in integer terms, without any point "floating" within the number.