Bitcoin Forum

1_"Why is the algorithm of BTC built in such a way that it drives all other cryptos as it moves up or down?

Like "Would it not have been much better if BTC price movement do not effect every other cryptos?, So as when the price of BTC falls, other cryptos price will not but would be base on the amount of demand and supply present in them,  just like the traditional forex market where all fiat currencies do not fall at same time.

It's nothing to do with an "algorithm". It's just that BTC is still pretty much acting as the index of the cryptocurrency space, and that it still has the most trading volume outside of stablecoins. Don't expect things to change in the near future.


That's the preferred market condition for sure if you like holding certain tokens, but in the end, market forces will decide how things will move.

I have to say In my little knowledge that this could be as result of other cryptos trying to mimic (copy) or to become a better version of Bitcoin after it was created back in 2009. Therefore  Bitcoin became more dominant and a model for other cryptos to follow as they failed to overtake or become exactly like Bitcoin.
So It's now just like a theory Bitcoin falls or rises other cryptos follow suit.

By that "algorithm" you refer to the law of demand and supply?

I couldn't care less about the other crypto.

Too bad, most wrench who hold bags of shitcoins, own bitcoin. When the price falls, it most likely that the demand does too. When someone doesn't want bitcoin, they definitely don't want shitcoin X.

- 99.9% of cryptocurrencies aren't trying to be like Bitcoin but are more of like pseudo-equity
- even if this is the case, it has nothing to do with why the crypto markets move with BTC

My point here is base on those first Altcoins like Litecoin that aimed at becoming a lighter and faster version of Bitcoin,
Including other first ones that came out with Litecoin before this recent coins.

Most Altcoins are listed with a BTC pair on exchanges so it makes sense everything goes down together

The dependency of altcoin's price on bitcoin isn't enforced by some algorithms.
It's more due to the exchanges and how almost every altcoin has a trading pair with BTC. And also how almost 50% of the trades on any exchange involve "bitcoin". This is where the relation comes from.

You may think that the value of altcoins is derived from their USD market(or tether/BUSD/etc). It's not, their value mostly depends on their respective BTC pair market.

It's not about the algo.
And what you're asking is it's like asking "why when USD price skyrockets vs <country X> currency also the gasoline price (in <country X> currency) skyrockets?" (And yes, that's because the international price of oil matters, and that's in USD).

Most altcoins are traded vs BTC, not dollar. And that's one of the reasons altcoins' prices depends greatly on the fluctuations in Bitcoin price.

There is no algorithm that governs the market price of bitcoin or altcoins. It is purely supply and demand.


This is because Bitcoin is still the most traded cryptocurrency, when we exclude stablecoins, and since many altcoins trade with a BTC pair on exchanges, it acts as a benchmark for all other cryptocurrencies.

The price movement in the market has nothing to do with the algorithm on which Bitcoin was developed, nor with the different algorithms of other altcoins. All that matters is that this is an emerging market that Bitcoin is still used as an indicator and therefore its price movement is followed by the prices of alternative cryptocurrencies.
On the other hand, not all altcoins move according to the movement of the bitcoin price as if they are chasing it, but there are currencies whose price sometimes takes an upward trend when the price of bitcoin is going down. There is no official rule for price movement except the law of supply and demand, which is still relatively affected by Bitcoin.

what you are discussing is called ARBITRAGE. its not an algo. its just a market oppertunity

when a altcoin can be exited via fiat and by BTC it opens it up a circular path to being used as a arbitrage route when the BTC:USD rate changes

EG

BTC:USD           ALT:USD             ALT:BTC
 0.1:2000       1000:2000          1000:0.1

if the BTC:USD changes. you then see you can ride the route around the alt market back to BTC:USD to gain more
by:
when the btc price goes up you ride the btc->usd->alt->btc route
EG BTC:USD is 0.1=2002 = getting 2002 USD = getting 1001 alts = getting 0.1001btc

when the btc price goes down ride the btc->alt->usd->btc route
EG BTC:USD is 0.1:1998 = getting 1000 alts = getting 2000usd = getting 0.1001btc

which doing so makes the altcoins price change in direct response, by moving their market orders

its not some 'algo' its simply just market access and cross trading of altcoins with bitcoin and USD allowing a circular path of profit opportunity

it only works when there is a significant amount of movement to make these routes profitable once the trade fee's are accounted for
EG if it requires a 3 swap route. thats 3x fee's so if the fee's are 1% then the BTC:USD price needs to move by more then 3% where it has yet to trigger someone else to have used that advantage to move the other markets back in line. so its not something everyone can do. its the 'fastest first' trader that gets the gain and their action moves the altcoin markets back into equilibrium. so not everyone can win, just the fastest, first people to take advantage of it

BTC's algorithm has nothing to do with price, mate. Currently, the capitalization of bitcoin still accounts for most of the market that you can see on coinmaketcap, the capitalization of bitcoin is more than 400 billion and the capitalization of the entire crypto market is $943 billion, this is not a small cap, it is ~50% of the market cap. So it's no surprise that all altcoins are dependent on bitcoin's price reaction.

Perhaps there will come a time when this dependence will be reduced, when the market grows stronger like stocks or forex, things will gradually change.

It's mostly just Litecoin, Peercoin, a few others, and the Bitcoin forks.

Not to mention that these coins are pretty much dead already anyway, and they have virtually zero effect in the current markets today. So, still no.

No algorithm was built for it.

It is very natural correlation between Bitcoin and alternate coins. You should know years ago, altcoins have trading pairs with Bitcoin as their first ones. Before appearance of stable coins, Bitcoin >< altcoins, Bitcoin >< fiat currency, altcoin >< fiat currency.

Nowadays, in crypto market, you have stable coins and altcoins have lot of trading pairs with different stable coins (USDT, USDC, etc.) and pairs between 2 altcoins such as ERC-20 token with Ethereum ETH. The domination and significant effect of Bitcoin is there.

Importantly, Bitcoin is the biggest cryptocurrency in marketcap so it is natural to see it affects and leads the market. Same with stock market, blue-chip stocks lead stock market.

Historical snapshot at 28 April 2013: https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20130428/

You're asking about the pairs that it has for most exchanges and as they've said, it has nothing to do with the algorithm.

You have to remember that bitcoin is the king of the crypto market and it won't even be known if there's no bitcoin. You cannot change that fact that most pairs have bitcoin.

It's still the same in the crypto market, there goes the stable coins that don't really fall even bitcoin falls. And they're also part of the crypto market if that's not included in your description as you compare with the forex market.

I think you have to educate yourself a little bit more what bitcoin does and what it doesn't do. Bitcoin and alt coins are not connected in any way. Like different companies of the same field the crypto price correlate to some point, like it is with stock prices. Still there is no algorithm that does control that. Also if it would be easily foreseeable everyone would just quickly go into alt coins when bitcoin falls.

It has to do with investors as well as any coin holders who let go of their cryptocurrency assets when they see Bitcoin that has gone down, as well as when Bitcoin is moving up where they start buying again slowly on some of their preferred cryptocurrencies.

Yes, things like what you said are indeed better so that everyone who feels at a loss with Bitcoin can immediately move to a better altcoin. But the problem is that there is no better coin than Bitcoin so altcoins also tend to decline when good coins like Bitcoin start to fall. There are two things that make Bitcoin always strong in its influence in the market;

1. Bitcoin Dominance in Crypto Market Cap
The fundamental reason behind altcoins following Bitcoin is because the price of altcoins is usually measured in Bitcoins. These pioneering crypto assets may be flanked by more than 3,000 competitors, but still account for more than half of the entire crypto asset market cap. This dominance of the crypto market gives Bitcoin a lot of influence and control.

2. Bitcoin is the Reserve Currency for Transactions
According to Blockchain.com, there are now more than 18 million Bitcoins in circulation in the crypto asset market globally. Meanwhile, in terms of market capitalization, CoinMarketCap data notes that Bitcoin's dominance continues to decline, and is now at 46 percent of the overall market.

When there is an increased outflow of Bitcoin from the largest exchanges in the industry, investors tend to see this as a positive sign for the cryptocurrency.
This is because investors predict Bitcoin is entering an accumulation phase, which means a bull market may be imminent. This confidence can flow into competing altcoins and benefit the cryptocurrency market more broadly. Source: pluang.com (https://pluang.com/id/blog/resource/hubungan-harga-bitcoin-dan-altcoin)

You seem to imply that everything's done intentionally or there are specific mathematical formulae followed by the market. No, there's none. It's just that the entire crypto market is still somehow represented by Bitcoin until now, and for good reasons.

Even up to this point, I still believe that if Bitcoin fails, the rest of the cryptocurrency universe which is made of thousands and thousands of coins will crumble down along with it. That's how huge Bitcoin's influence is on the market.


Nothing would be better than a free market. Forget about that rotten Forex market. It's not even worth comparing with the Bitcoin market.

Bitcoin dominance will be reduced with time, with growth of altcoin ecosystems but it won't change a fact that Bitcoin will still be the largest cryptocurrency and a leader of this market.

In each bull run, there are thousand of new altcoins will be created and contribute to whole crypto marketcap. The number of new altcoins created in each bull run will be higher in future bull runs because a general growth and adoption of cryptocurrency.

Well I am absolutely sure, that you are a holder of shitcoin, and on mode desperation lol, to the "question" the first thing is your post title clicked bait, at least for me.

Second, we cannot or better said we should not think of equivalences (e.g. of markets) of the fiat currency in its performance with what happens with bitcoin, it is obvious, it is natural to go to the comparison, but for reference only, that is, the  behavior of bitcoin for now is very different in the crypto market, sometimes or many times it borders on similar behavior and in fact there is a tendency for speculators, prophets to make these comparisons.

So, to be in the game, to understand these things, you should reading (much) to get informed, by the way one of them is that there is no associated algorithm that makes the rest of the marketcrypto react to the price of bitcoin.

There's nothing in Bitcoin itself (its design or how it operates) that makes other coins follow it on the market. I see why you might think so, observing how Bitcoin goes down and so do major cryptos and vice versa, but that's correlation, not causation. Bitcoin is the biggest coin by market capitalization and by reputation (the scope of people trusting it rather than other coins). So if it goes down, it can be viewed by many as a signal of something wrong being with the market, so they sell other coins as well. If it goes up, they start buying other coins in the hope that they'll go up as well. A self-fulfilling prophecy, basically, at least most of the time. Sometimes there can be events concerning the whole market, such as trading restrictions, major exchange hacks or a global event that is likely to disrupt the global economy (like the pandemic).
The above point it just to add to the trading pairs reason, outlined by others in the thread.

You are misunderstanding bitcoin completely, bitcoin is not somehow manipulating the other coins with its code, if you think about it it would be very dumb for the developers of thousands of altcoins to somehow leave some code allowing bitcoin to manipulate their coins.

So what is actually happening? Bitcoin is simply too big, as an example think of bitcoin as the sun and altcoins as the planets in the solar system, even if the sun moves around the galaxy it has so much influence over the planets in the solar system that they move with it, bitcoin is the same, bitcoin has such a huge advantage over any other coin that if it moves then most coins respond to it even if their developers do not want this to keep happening.