Bitcoin Forum

Hello.

I've been trading bitcoin and a few alts to dollar for some time now.
I've never gotten into crypto-crypto pairs. Such as BTC-ETH BTC-XRP...  e.t.c.

I was wandering what the main differences are regarding trading, and where to learn about trading BTC pairs.
What I have noticed; Is it's often the opposite of what you expect.
For instance, Litecoin was about to skyrocket recently, and over a Bitmex i went in on the BTC-LTC pair. Litecoin did skyrocket... and I lost a bunch of money as the BTC-LTC pair dropped hard. Presumably BTC went up even more than LTC or something..

I'm curious about the nuances of BTC-crypto trading. Like, often when bitcoin goes sideways, alts go up..... are there any rough rules like this for BTC pairs?

Cheers,
TG

In most cases when volatility on bitcoin decrease than short term speculators move to alts pumping them (btc is too boring) and alt/btc price is mooning.

When volatility on bitcoin increase (by pump or dump) than short termspeculators leave altcoins due to low predictability and move to trade bitcoin which is more predictable than and finally volatile enough.

That way it is good to trade bitcoin to altcoin after dump or pump when bitcoin is resting or moving slowly in any direction.


Important is that if you want to earn $ than trade with alt/$ pair. If you don't care about your return in $$ but you care about your return in BTC than you trade with alt/btc pair. Don't mix it.

Thanks for your reply. That's enlightening.
Personally I'm in it for the $. I also want to invest in BTC or at least have some longer-term trades.. but I'd like to pick my moment to buy in so It's $ for me.
I have a feeling I don't quite get alt/btc pairs.. so I will steer clear of those markets.
 : )

Stay with $$ based pairs than. If you will decide that it is good to make long term trade with bitcoin than buy it and while waiting for good price to sell you can trade it on btc/alt price to increase its amount. If you are inexperienced with that than train yourself with low bets. 0.001 BTC ~9$ is the lowest possible bet on binance.

Most of the time, the golden rule is:
- If BTC is pumping in $ value, alts will likely lose its BTC value but will have more or less the same $ value
- If BTC is dumping in $ value, alts will likely lose its BTC value but will have more or less the same $ value
- If BTC goes sideways, alts will likely increase  BTC value so it will have more $ value too

Traders love the sideway of BTC after a pump, it will give alts a boost in its price just like what happened in 2017 or the other bull run.

Thats mathematically impossible :)
$/BTC is dumping, ALT/BTC is going down and ALT/$ stays the same? That makes huge spread between calculated alt/$ price and market ALT/$ price making arbitrage traders do their job and earn on that spread making market alt/$ price dump too.

There are no specific patterns or rules for BTC/Alt pairs, but you can rely on some indicators such as:

 - If the market is in a long bear, the price of BTC will rise wildly with the stability and tendency to rise by most of cryptos, after reaching the higher levels BTC starts to decline and the crazy rise in altcoins so you can take advantage of both.

Also, there are some inverse pairs such as BTC/BCH.

You can use (BTC Dominance) to predict market behavior as the increase in the index indicates the fear of users of shticoins "fast changes will hapen" and vice versa.

For long term traders or holding its better to stick on top altcoin its up to you if you want to trade on USDT pair or in BTC pair but for me I'm okay to btc pair since I want to get more bitcoin for some scenario trader like to trade on USDT pair to see quickly the value of its profit/lose but if you want to hold bitcoin or believe bitcoin will value higher in the future you will like the btc pair.

But keep in mind, BTC and Cryptocurrency have volatile values, so you have to rethink to invest your funds.

Most altcoins can only be traded with BTC or ETH. Which means that alt traders can make their decisions based on two dimensions:
ALT <> BTC and BTC <> USD

If BTCUSD goes up, the buying power of BTC for ALT goes up, so they can either use the BTC to buy more ALTs. Or, convert their alts to BTC to sell back to USD.

So if after a pump, bitcoin starts losing dominance that is a possible clue alts are about to make a move up of their own?
Also is the index the % dominance BTC has?

First of all you need to get the price changes against bitcoin but most of the people just see it in terms of USD which causes huge losses for many trader.On some exchange the prices will not increase too much due to less demand so if you find less price then place order for your desired price.

Yes something like that do happen, whenever the price of btc is going sideways and not really moving up, the price for altcoins begins to go up or maybe cause the price of btc was dropping. But it doesn't happen just like that always, there are times you will discover that it is totally a different case, the price would all follow the same move simultaneously. But I would advise you to continue with the Btc to Usd cause it seems like that is what's working for you. Don't risk your money with a strategy that you know nothing about at all.

My personal opinion is that if you use technical analysis, then it makes no sense for you to trade a crypto/crypto, because technical analysis does not work there. Trade everything only to the dollar or usdt, then there is a chance to earn.

Bear in mind that it's not always a good time to gain profit out of your investments. Cryptocurrency is volatile and is always changing. Both Bitcoins and altcoins could change unexpectedly as well as Usd. You only need to invest and trade at a perfect time. It's all about the perfect timing.

when it comes to altcoins, i'm mainly only interested in BTC pairs. when you see bullish patterns forming across lots of BTC pairs, you know we're entering a period where it's better to hold alts than bitcoin. there's nothing more lucrative than altcoin season!

i don't like to trade alt/USD pairs. often times when bitcoin volatility hits, they just stagnate or bleed down. i'm trying to accumulate bitcoins not dollars (and i hate losing coins) so that's another reason i prefer the BTC pairs.

For me im only trading altcoins that has BTC pairs,some people preffer ETH pairs too it depends on your taste and the way you trade but I find it more easy to make decisions on BTC pairs.But yeah youre right that when bitcoin price goes dormant or fall then thats the right time to enjoy scalping on altcoing because they are more likely to get pump base on historic patterns everytime bitcoin price falls.

Obviously Bitcoin trading is better, and Bitcoin trading is a different P2P transaction with Fiat trading which has margins as well as laverge to benefit and has a huge risk. Bitcoin trading is a recommendation.

Isn't it better to hold alt/usd pair then, as long as you can exit the market correctly? I mean, if you hold alt/btc, then if BTC rise or dump your BTC will also decrease, as most of the time alt will lose its values compared to BTC. If you hold alt/usd pair, then you can sell and then use that USD to buy more BTC. I'm not sure if this works but sounds like a good try for me.


I think you misunderstood what OP wants to discuss.

In the crypto market or any financial market, you will never find such cyclical signs. if it is too easy to notice, then you have not become miserable in creating strategies.
The important thing here, you need to know where is a good time to buy coins. It doesn't matter at the price, it's important for signals from the volume, the whale community, ...

There are no simple rules that you can follow to trade BTC-ALT pairs, if such rules existed at some point you can be sure that people exploited them to the point that they disappeared, the truth is that trading crypto pairs is not different than trading against fiat, the only difference is that you have now two volatile assets trading against each other and instead of looking at profits in fiat you need to look at your profits in terms of BTC.

I think there are people who are trading all three that makes the most profits. Arbitrage is still there for profit and you need to be quick and there are trading bots that are doing this right now so not that many people can manually do it.

However, if you can manage to something like bitcoin to ethereum to dollar and back to bitcoin you can make a lot of money very quickly, the amount could be small but the profit would be more guaranteed and sure than just buying and waiting for it to go up since the profit is there for the taking. Of course given just these two options I still prefer bitcoin and altcoin pairs because I hate usd pairs and never really use fiat
unless I am really forced to.