Why is always more profitable to trade alts vs BTC, not vs USD
Hi guys, the reason I am posting this is because many users are asking me to chart altcoins vs USD instead of vs BTC. I won't be trading or charting any alts vs USD and the reason is simple:
Let's take Ethereum as an example.
If ETH is going up against USD but going down against BTC that means BTC vs USD is doing better than ETH vs USD. Then why would you have your money into ETH vs USD if you know you'll have more profits having your money into BTC vs USD?
If ETH is going up against USD and BTC is going down against USD, this means that ETH vs BTC is doing even better than ETH vs USD. So again, why would you trade ETH vs USD if the profits are bigger in ETH vs BTC?
Any way you look at it you will always make bigger profits if you trade against BTC only.
Any coin going up against USD but going down against BTC equals BTC doing better against USD than that altcoin, then is best to not trade that altcoin & stick to trading/holding bitcoin.
This is the reason I will only use USD to trade it against BTC, not altcoins.
Only when BTC is expected to go down against USD I will put my money into USDT before if I can anticipate the crash. And I will continue to trade the altcoins that are doing good against BTC. Only when BTC and alts are going down against USD I will put everything into USDT & wait for the correction to finish so that then I can buy more BTC for cheaper than I sold.
Makes sense?
Please leave your comments below and feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but so far I find this to be the best logic.
Cheers & see you soon xx
It makes perfect sense to trade BTC vs Alt as BTC is the gateway coin that you need to go through to buy most alts. If you have $100 and but BTC with it, you could just hold the BTC, or you could trade alts. If you trade alts and make a 50% profit, that is 50% over the profit you would have made holding BTC.
If you measure success against USD and make 50%,but BTC goes up by 50% in the same time frame, you haven't really made any trading profit as holding BTC would have yielded the same profits.
As I tend to only trade with BTC (and alts bought with this) which was obtained via mining etc and not purchased at any particular price, I would much rather see trades compared to BTC and not USD.
That is exactly why I made this post. I don't know why people still wants to trade alts vs usd...
But what if BTC is unstable or falling like a stone?
Because it's pretty hard to understand this haha
good explanation
Good stuff good for me another ideas as part of my learning process keep sharing useful idea, Stay awesome people. Thanks dobe4ever.
Thanks for the post!
that makes cense!
So I should ALWAYS trade into ETH and LTC using BTC not USD? Unless I expect a BTC pullback soon? How often does it make you more money? Thanks!
I personally hate how everyone trades in BTC pairs. I don't keep my trading capital in BTC, and I don't trade to earn more BTC. I trade to earn more USD. If a coin appreciates 50% while BTC appreciates 60%, I still made a profitable trade while missing a more profitable trade in BTC. I don't see why trading against BTC is the goal, unless you have fully removed yourself from the fiat system and pegged yourself solely to BTC. Seeing gains/losses against BTC is useless to me, the goal is more USD. If BTC tanks and you have a sell order in Satoshis on an altcoin, the order could be triggered while the USD price is break-even or even at a loss! Assessing your trades against BTC is not an accurate representation of true trading profitability.
Thank you! I was thinking that there was something wrong with me. I do not understand their point. It adds a lot of volatility to trade against a coin such as Bitcoin.
Great counter argument to this! Thanks for posting
Great article! been trying to figure this out for a while. After trading on bitfinex and binance, i've finally decided that it was too much effort to profit from trading on binance using ATL/BTC pairs. Using USDT pairs on bitfinex is much easier.
At the end of the day, if i want an alt coin that is not on bitfinex, i buy it on binance and hodl it. If i want profits from trading, i just use BTC/USDT since its so volatile the profits are much greater than trading alt coins. Besides, look at the trends, most Alt coins follow right after BTC anyway. Adding ALT/BTC/USD to the mix just makes trading slower, i'd rather keep it simple with BTC/USDT.
exactly..a while back though alts did theier own thing dispite what btc did..now it isnt worth the headache and weird because when btcusd is up /btc alts are also up hahaa
I disagree that it's completely useless. One should use the trading pairs with the most volume, as they present the most accurate price data (better yet a combo of high volume pairs, e.g. ETH/KRW, ETH/CNY and ETH/BTC - KRW and CNY pairs account for ≈ 60% volume, BTC accounts for only ≈ 10%)
what does volume have to do with profit percentages??? You buy/sell for the specific price. If BTC is going up against any other alt then it's always better to not trade that alt and just hold bitcoin, even if that alt is going up against any other fiat, because it means BTC is going up even more than the alt against that fiat since everything is measured against the fiat... its really not that hard to understand...
One may place trades on the ETH/BTC pair, but when viewing the charts, higher volume pairs are important to view. ETH/KRW and ETH/CNY charts do not look the same as USD or BTC variants, yet they carry much more weight in volume and offer more accurate price data from which one may use in conjunction with BTC variants to make trading decisions and price targets.
Hi, when you said "If BTC is going up against any other alt ", does it mean the value of the pair ALT/BTC (e.g TRX/BTC) is going down, right?
E.g
-Current: TRX/BTC = 990st
-BTC up against TRX => TRX/BTX < 990st
-BTC down against TRX => TRX/BTX > 990st
is it correct?