The Wisdom of Trading Pairs

Hello again, unappreciative newbie crypto investor that's not reading this anyway. How are you? Good.

Do you know what a trading pair is? You do? Good.

Bye.

Oh, perhaps you don't. Or know why you should care.

Trading pairs are like CryptoOfTheMonth/BTC, or Shitcoin/ETH, or PopularCoins/Tether. The more trading pairs you have available to you, the less likely you are to fuck your money up entirely.

How, and why?

Well, the how is sort of up to you. But the why is important. Look at most exchanges, there they are. The tabs on top of the Poloniex listings, for example.

If you're new to Bitcoin/crypto trading, understand that you may need a safe harbor for your holdings, at some point. If all you can do is trade in Bitcoin, then Bitcoin's price is your God. In other words, when Bitcoin goes on some crazy tear, as it is apt to do at any time now, your alt coins are at risk of being left in the dust.

The market looks hot now. But in reality, many of them have never recovered their value in Bitcoin. Sure, they're up in dollars. For those of us who HODL'd through the dip, though, it's another story.

And that is why trading pairs are important. You don't always have to have your investments working for you. Sometimes the best thing to do is not trade, but wait.

A good example is the Tether market. If you, say, see an ominous green candle on the Bitcoin chart, you might want to cash out to Tether and wait for the correction. This is, of course, how many day traders operate, with great success. Those 40% dips you see could translate into 40% more Bitcoin for you.

However... a lot of people are increasingly nervous about Tether. It's not really worth anything if the company goes under. Bit of a dilemma, there. But it's probably safe to hold Tether in the short term.

Things really improve for you with multiple trading pairs. Some crypto can be sold for BTC or ETH (Or XMR or LTC, etc.). Take advantage of that when you can. Think of it as an insurance policy. If one of your trading pairs is out of reach, or is driving your holdings down, having another trading pair to jump into when the need arises can be a life saver.

So, just scratching the surface here. You can find in-depth explanations online. I'm not finding you a link to a better article. You didn't even read this one.