Bitcoin Forum

Guys

Apologies for my naivety on this subject but I really am struggling !!!!

More and more I want to buy coins with lower market caps that you can find on exchanges such as Cryptopia . Kucoin etc etc - I understand how to get the money onto the exchanges BUT what I am struggling with is VERY few of the alt coins are paired against USD - so you have to trade paired with ETH or most commonly BTC - what does this actually mean ??

Say I " Buy " the coin paired with BTC does that mean that if my coin goes UP in value but BTC goes up by more then I lose out ?? If my coin goes up but BTC goes down - does that mean I earn more money ???

Apologies but as BTC is just SO volatile surely you can have a situation where your coin does well but you still lose money ???

Any help anyone could give me really would be greatly appreciated !!!

Many thanks indeed.

it means exactly that. you try to make profits in bitcoins by trading altcoins against bitcoins. most serious bitcoiners see their wealth as a number in bitcoins and not usd because of their faith in bitcoin's long term value. If you were to compare your performance at increasing your bitcoin stash with an altcoin versus with usd, you might actually find that altcoins are much easier and usd is the lowest performing 'coin' you could trade. If you really want to trade against usd you can find it with many coins but there is less volume.

The format is AAA/BBB in this case. The first AAA indicates the asset you buy or you sell. The second BBB indicates your trade method, this can be USDT, BTC, ETH or something else. If you make profit, it's calculated based on BBB type.

I see - so what happens to the bitcoin price is totally irrelevant ??

If your coin goes up in value then it means its worth more of a bitcoin and vice / versa ??

I'm sorry but it still doesn't make sense ??

Today as an example a coin was UP in $ but DOWN in BTC - surely if it has gone up in value then it would be " up " full stop ??

Is it because BTC has gone up more ??

Also can you still be in profit even though the pairing is in minus ??

Apologies for these questions but it really would be a huge help to me !!!

Many thanks indeed.

Really not that hard to understand

A Coin can not be just "up" or "down" in value. That sentence means nothing.

you have to set it into comparison with something.

Do you want to exchange your Coin for USD, then your coin might me more worth than last week, because you get now more USD

Do you want to exchange your Coin for Bitcoin, then your coin might be less worth be cause you get less Bitcoin then last week

Do you want to exchange your Coin for the Pet of your best friend then its absolutely nothing worth, because your best friend says: go to hell.

So when you are buying an alt coin paired with BTC - you actually want you Alt coin to gain in value but BTC to lose value to get the maximum return ??

Very exact thing that you are saying on here which is actually true because if we do base our earnings on usd value then we would really able to tell the difference since price of bitcoin do moves on either ways while we are trading lets say we do earn some profits on trades with some btc but the price of btc goes down then we would eventually see that price on fiat would really be entirely different as we anticipated.

You dont buy a pairing, you dont buy a coin paired with another coin

You buy a Coin. End of Story.

This Coin is Worth something compared to something else

The Graph that shows you this is a pairing. It pairs your Coin against something else.

Now if that something else is something you absolutly dont want, why are you watching at that graph?

you have to watch a pairing that interests you.

If you want USD you have to watch at the Coin/USD pairing. If your exchange doesnt offer that, you have to watch at the Coin/BTC - BTC/USD pairing to get your information

Maybe this will help...

You walk into a shop and buy milk with usd.  That is essentially a milk/usd exchange.  You want to buy milk - usd is what you use to purchase it.  Over the border in Canada, it is milk/cad. Same milk, different purchasing currency.

Now the pricing of ‘milk’ can vary a bit depending on what currency you are using to buy.

So on a crypto exchange you can buy ‘milk’ with an assortment of other currency, depending upon which one you have in your wallet.

If you have some btc, then you look at the ‘milk’/btc pairing.
If you have some ltc, then look at that one to what the ‘milk’ is trading for.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Aussiesloth - what I am struggling with is - " is my currency gaining value " - if its losing against BTC then how can it be uo in $ ??

Why then on most exchanges can you not buy Altcoins paired with USD ???

Thats what I am not understanding ?? Say I want to buy Electroneum as an example - I am trying to buy it because I believe its a good project etc etc - I am not interested in BTC or how BTC will do compared to Electroneum but as it stands if Electroneum started gaining traction etc I would still lose money if BTC gained more traction ???

Apologies again but what am I not understanding ??

If I buy ETC at $800 and it goes to $900 then I am $100 in profit - nothing to do with BTC ???

All coins has a usd value,  just check it out from coinmarketcap before you buy. Dont be discouraged if the coin has down against btc or eth,  just base your trade on its usd value.

THANKYOU layout thats what I was getting at !!!!

If I buy a coin and it goes up in USD then it has gained value regardless of its value with BTC ??

So as an example I buy a coin for $100 and it goes up 100$ against the USD BUT goes down 20% against BTC - I have still made $ 100 ???

Is that correct ???

Correct. You will have gained USD 100,- but have lost value relative in terms of BTC. The latter meaning that you'd have gained more USD if you would have invested in BTC instead of the alt coin.

Makes sense?

If you buy any altcoin for longterm investment for better buy it with USDT and if you would like to buy any coin with BTC just doing short trade because the price of BTC can be soar anytime. But day altcoin trade that paired with BTC need more skill and time because we shoulld analyis both price. 

Not really irrelevant. Consider this example: let us say you have coin X whose value is .5 in Bitcoin. And assuming that the value of Bitcoin is 100 USD per 1 Bitcoin. If you have 1 coin X, that means you have 50 USD because that is half a BTC. Now, this is to show you that the value of Bitcoin is very relevant. If Bitcoin's price goes up to, say, 200 USD and your coin X is also growing in BTC value, reaching .75 in Bitcoin's value, then all in all your worth has reached 150 USD. Had your coin grown to .75 in BTC but BTC remained at 100 USD only then your gain would not have reached that high. I hope you get my explanation.

Hey Banksy, glad you've got it understood.  Cheers.

Im going to defer the explanation to an algebra teacher

Thx again AussieSloth

So essentially if you buy $1000 of Electroneum paired with BTC and it goes up $1000 then you now have $2000.00 worth regardless of what happens with BTC BUT the paring shows if you would have been better or worse off buying BTC ???

Thx very much indeed again for all you help.

Just out of interest why don t the exchanges put the USD price as well as the pairings price as surely it is hard to work out how your investment is doing in $ ???

it is a bit hard to answer your question literary so let me tell you my plan.

i believe in the future of bitcoin and i say it will be worth a lot more than what it is right now. lets say i have $1000 to invest and nothing more. that gives me some amount of bitcoin. in order to add to it, i trade altcoins so that i can make profit on the bitcoin that i already have.
so if i invest in X i do it with BTC and if X goes up i have increased my BTC and if it goes down i have decreased it.

now for me, i don't care if bitcoin is volatile now. if it goes up or down in short term. i am increasing my BTC and i as i said above believe it will be worth a lot more than  the current value.

and this is the view that i think most of the altcoin traders share. if you start wanting profit on your USD then things become a lot more complicated specially since most coins can even be traded with fiat.

I think that your pennies rise in value is due to the fluctuations of the bitcoin market, you can see the market is always changing in capitalization. When bitcoin capitalization increased, the other Altcoins decreased. While the value of the stock is decreasing, the movement of money is very clear. But I believe that one day there will be another coin to beat the bitcoin.