Bitcoin Forum

When people discuss crypto prices, they always do so in relation to the US dollar, however this should only be correct when discussing Bitcoin - for alts the more important metric is their price in BTC.
Why? Because it indicates their performance relative to Bitcoin, so if Bitcoin rises and alts rise too, the first thing that you have to look at is their price change in BTC - when it's negative, it means that BTC outperforms them, and the opposite if it's positive.
Bitcoin is often called the king of crypto, and rightfully so - it's more stable, more safe, has higher volumes than any other coins, so when you invest in alts, you absolutely want them to outperform BTC, otherwise you are taking unjustifiable risks and get lower profits.

You're viewing from a bitcoin-biased trader's stand point, meaning you trade on ALTs/BTC pairs. Yes, it's right BTC price is more important than USD price if you want to accumulate as much BTC as you can. And when BIT pumps high, you sell you BTC to USD to earn double-profit.

But it doesn't matter if I'm a USD-biased trader. I trade on ALTs/USDT pairs. My first priority is to accumulate as much USD as I can then and I don't care about BTC.

Whether you're a BTC-biased or USD-biased trader, your ultimate goal is to see USD pouring into your bank account (not USDT stable shit coin on exchanges).

it is coinmarketcap.com's fault because all the newbies check that website and the default value is in USD so these newbies who don't even trade, think their bags of altcoins are increasing in value whereas in reality they have lost money because initially they bought those altcoins with their precious bitcoin so for example if a newbie had 0.1BTC worth $300 and bought an altcion with that, the said altcoin is worth higher in USD but if he converts it back to get his bitcoin back he will only get 0.01-0.02BTC and that is currently worth $80-$160 so he is in a huge loss.

If you want to gain USD, you still have to pay huge attention to BTC price of alts, and BTC market in general, because you can be missing out on safer and bigger USD profits if you put too much money into alts and they get outperformed by BTC, which happens a lot of the time, like in the current rally.


I wouldn't say that it's the fault of coinmarketcap or other sites, it's just the general mentality of measuring everything in USD, even if alternative pairs provide additional information.

I think that usd price is more important, because the new investors who come to crypto market lead fiat money here and change the dollar for cryptocurrency, so the price to the dollar is more important for them. Btc price is more important for those traders who trade btc/alts pairs and accumulates bitcoin for the future

I disagree. I find basing values on the dollar to be more useful given that the dollar is still the global reserve currency. Bitcoin is still too volatile to use as a baseline for measuing the value of other currencies. When bitcoin is much higher in value and more stable in price, then we can use bitcoin as a basis for valuing alts.

its depends on our purpose in our investments or trading activity my friend
if we want to collect more or increase our bitcoin amount, i think bitcoin terms will be more important than USD terms
but if we want to increase our portofolio in usd terms, usd terms will be better than bitcoin terms

But the problem is almost everything in the world is valued against Fiat money. Buy a pack of milk, biscuit, ride a metro, order a burger, receive your salary, pay your bills, almost all of them are defined against Fiat. And all of the Fiat are defined against USD. So, this loop created by the IMF and world bank is hard to break.

Yeah, I find it fairly annoying that USD prices are displayed standard on price overview sites like Coinmarketcap.
You really don't know anything with that, when you are just looking at the altcoin prices.


You've completely missed OP's point... They're saying that you cannot gauge the performance of alts by looking at the USD price, since those will automatically increase whenever BTC goes up.
Since pretty much all coins are traded against BTC.

I couldn't agree more.

If you invest in alts, you are probably believing bitcoin will be huge in time. So you need to beat bitcoin price to have more btc, not more usd.

really I agree with you.
up and down the price of a coin is a rhythm that must be there. but the risk of loss in investing other than bitcoin is greater because it is difficult to outperform Bitcoin itself

There are some propositions that are floating around this forum to start measuring everything in satoshi's to brake away from fiat, but my thread is not about it - it's about cryptocurrency market as a whole, and the idea that altcoin traders should pay close attention to Bitcoin, because it influences the whole market - whenever it moves, alts move too, always, no exception. Measuring price of alts in BTC gives you perspective to how well they respond to Bitcoin's movements, which would allow you to get more profits, including profits in fiat.

Yes is more important bitcoin price, but people need to report to USD or EUR because when they buy bitcoin need to buy with fiat money and when they want to cashout they ussually need to convert to USD.

in a market like this, missing out is also just as bad as losing money and when you own altcoins even with only viewing the USD amount that you earn, you are still missing out.

take the "top" altcoin  that everyone seems to blindly love for example. assuming you had USD and bought ETH instead of bitcoin at the very bottom of its drop with the current highest price of it you had made only about 50% profit on your investment in the past months.
now if you had invested that USD fully in bitcoin you could have made about 170% profit.

with real numbers:
$1000 in ETH -> $1500
$1000 in BTC -> $2700
the amount you missed is $1200 which is bigger than your initial capital, and it is big enough to be considered "loss" specially since we all know that the same thing always happens when bitcoin rises!

Yes it seems that btc has easily outperformed all alts especially if we talk about recent run where btc has undergone a complete parabolic trajectory while others have only risen a small percentage as compared to btc. Looks like alts will make some real move only once btc settles or moves sideways for some weeks.

Traders should firmly have a long position with their investments in Bitcoin, looking on the comprehensive market growth and not just transient movements.

For me it doesn't matter because Fiat will always be there because Fiat has become a very legitimate payment tool for the world, the most important thing is Bitcoin is number 1 in the world of all cryptocurrency that exists because of its enormous value and currently surpassing the others in for a few percent gold, this is not what you are discussing now with Fiat who can buy any item, this discusses between USD and Bitcoin.

Good point.

This could also enlighten those who just keeps on converting unto USD.
We see that here all the time. They problems when it is just a cent of a dollar per piece and what it to go way beyond 1 USD.

They need to surpass bitcoin first before they could even do that.
Performance wise and not just because of hypes.

Thanks for the heads up, I'm one of those people that when telling  others about the price of a certain altcoin I'm looking to it depends on the USD price. When I visit CMC now, I'll switch the price into BTC instead of USD. But it won't be easy for me to have that switch because I might still apply USD rates.

People only relate the price of altcoins and tokens to dollar simply because they want to know the corresponding value that can be easily analyzed. Same with bitcoin, it is also compared to dollars.

For me USD price is doesn't matter because even it has a sudden changes you don't have to worry because it change a little. And for those who are holding only a small amount of coin you don't have to worry to USD price change because it is only a cents and if you are holding a huge amount of coin I think this is all about strategy. You need to wait to price value increase of USD also because even a cent affect your income.

I think that is the same because when there is a coin that is high in USD then the price of the coin will also be high in BTC especially when the BTC price drops, and vice versa if the coin price is low at USD then the price will also be low in BTC especially when BTC increases

I think so too. Most altcoins prices are based on the price of Bitcoin, not on USD. In this case, it has something to do with USD and other currencies. But in terms of investment and trading in the crypto world, Bitcoin has more influence. But of course, it does not mean if the price of the USD does not give effect. Because basically we also use the benchmark USD when calculating or cashing out.

I believe that it is normal that the price of bitcoin is being compared with that of USD for now because this is the best way we could be able to get the exact worth of bitcoin since bitcoin itself is not so recognized in the world as a currency, but I believe in just a few years to come when the price of bitcoin have gotten to $100,000,000 because the value of fiat would have been ran down to nothing, then we are going to just depend on the value of bitcoin and it's smallest unit (“satoshi”).

I am agree with this. We are buying altcoin because we think we can double our bitcoin and i think its much important when we see rising altcoin price againts bitcoin rather than US Dollar. Most altcoin price base on USD rising because bitcoin price rising againts USD and i think i am agree we should pay attention to altcoin againts btc

That's what most of the time that we do, we always invest in bitcoin not in usd so we are calculating our investment in bitcoin pair but when we are calculating our profits we are using the USD value for much satisfying profits.

This is very important point but unfortunately even the good coins that survived the long bear market are still way down in terms of btc from the time of previous bull run i think it will take time for alts to recover and only good ones with quality product development will move forward.

the worst part is that most of the investors specially those on this forum speaking about it and all those who are using altcoin exchanges are using bitcoin to buy and sell altcoins!!! in fact nearly all the altcoin exchanges only have bitcoin as their base market then have other altcoins like tether as  the secondary market!
so it doesn't even make sense to talk about USD value of something that you didn't even buy with USD and you will never sell to USD!!!

There is great sense in this post. It's high time people stopped checking prices of altcoins in dollar value. I had a similar argument sometime ago in a crypto group, and most folks were like, forget it, we are only concerned about the USD worth. Everything being equal, USD worth for alts still depend on USD worth for BTC, hence satoshi value overrules when talking about worth of altcoins.

Yeah, you are right. But, we only calculate the price of small altcoins with btc, maybe we got used to.
Even, all the technical analysis should be done with the price of btc.

This is what I said about ethereum all the time. Most of the time from February there was a drop in ETH/BTC. At the same time, the price of the ETH/dollar has increased. Now, when the price of Bitcoin corrected, ethereum is experiencing a sharp decline in price.

Nevertheless, I believe that the price analysis should be carried out both in relation to the underlying asset of the industry, and to the dollar. The reason for this is that the cryptoindustry is not yet self-sufficient.

What you are saying is true and I noticed it today when I realized all the altcoins were reducing in price drastically following a significant drop in the price of BTC. Bitcoin is truly the King of crypto

I will not say like op but we need to give equal importance to the bitcoin market as well. That is the reason we people are seeing the huge amount list including bitcoin as a separate market for it.

Then most conversion part for any cryptos also we can see the bitcoin and USDT are at main place.

People should stop relying on stablecoins and instead use BTC to measure the value. It used to be like that in the old days when people were dumping alts for btc in the bear market because they were dumping much harder and not all exchanges allowed you to sell for fiat. The markets were more interesting back then.

I like how altcoins are lagging behind bitcoin all the time when it pumps but dump at the same time :)

It is important to consider the statement for any currency you have invested in such Bitcoin, USD, and euro and pounds etc. You will have the risk of decrease in price in any currency or coin as there might be a decrease in your cost price that results in loss. Therefore, we need to hold the currency till its price does not appear high in the market. Most of the investors are trying to hold Bitcoins some more time.

I think both BTC and USD price are important. When it discusses about crypto and altcoins it probably more right to use BTC price. But the price of BTC we count in USD. When we inside crypto market have deal with crypto it is ok to count in BTC but when we withdraw crypto in cash we make it in USD. So both BTC and USD price should be used in same time.

Not just thins but there is more to the drama. The rise in the value of ETH they hodl might not be a real rise in the value of ETH but a fall in the value of USD. The economic activity that is the demand and supply might still be in equilibrium but ETH might be gaining crazy weight and this would mean that holding the assumption of citrus Paribas, it would be a reduction in the value of Bitcoin that would look ETH over-weighed.

Agree, ethereum price rising recently because bitcoin price rising but againts bitcoin, ethereum still decline. Most investor always looking on USD price because its easier to recognize but the real investment is on bitcoin price because bitcoin is main cryptocurrency in market

You can't compare cryptocurrency coins from real money. Because there's will be a huge problem if your cents moves to its price from high to low like btc its very hard to calculate those USD.

Well, there are many traders that using altcoins - USDT pair to trading in several exchanges.
And sometimes investors want to investing their fiat money (USD/EUR/etc), to buying some coins.
That's why we usually relating the altcoins price to USD price.

Btc price determine the value in USDT so Btc price is very much important to consider first, when btc rise, altcoins fall, when btc falls or stable at a particular price then altcoins pumps, so BTC price has a lot to do

You are correct in stating the value of an asset in satoshi's can be more important than the price in USD because the latter is often quoted when referring to an assets market value and this can skew the profit and loss calculations relevant to its peg which for most alternatives is typically Bitcoin or Ethereum

The thing is, when Bitcoin's price in USD changes, all altcoins will change by similar percentage, all the time - this is how tightly altcoin markets are coupled with Bitcoin markets. Because of this BTC price of an altcoin is a great indicator of its relative performance - and altcoins are supposed to outperform BTC, otherwise you are risking your money only to lose opportunity to get more on a safer bet.

Indeed it is important, but most peoples in crypto sphere are often to see coin paired with usd price.
For USDT trader, im very sure most of their time are comparing bitcoin and altcoins with the USD metric.

BTC is not only more important than USD but more important than all exchange objects and stocks company, BTC prices are very developed from the year of manufacture we all know how much the price first. So IMO BTC is more important than all the object exchanges in this world.

Of course, definitely. usd price would be great enough to help you to find the value of bitcoin, but considering that trading with the usd to bitcoin kinda risky because it would make easier people to dump and pump bitcoin.

And many altcoin holders do not know it, they see only profits in USD but they are loosing potentional profit in BTC.

For example I bought ICON for 0.3$ per token and now it is around 0.4$ per token. But Bitcoin growth in this time from 3500$ to 8000$.  :'(

I am not only tradign with bitcoin pair also ethereum . I should say ethereum is also most powerful platform like bitcoin . I always calculate profit or loss based on my bitcoin and ethereum investment never did with the comparison with USD.

People trading to the dollar are professional traders who don't care what kind of asset to trade. People who trade for bitcoin are crypto enthusiasts