Ok so if that example is what you call "fact" or "reality"... then there isn't much we can talk about.

Exhibit A:

I've quickly compiled a number of metals and it is readily self-evident and amazingly obvious that gold has ZERO to say about the prices of other metals. Go take a look.
Frankly this example is SO bad I actually propose you retract it and we'll all pretend you never made it.
If those are the kinds of "facts" you base your arguments on then I am happy we disagree

Source: https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/palladium-price
(in case you need a fourth example just how Gold has nothing to do with the price of other precious metals)

Basically -  Not Even Wrong https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong.

Nope - it's because it does not answer my question. What you and most other people in the thread here do is explain how the current market works, not why this is how a proper market should work, and why it makes sense that the price of BTC basically dictates the prices of every other asset.

Let me try with another example.

Suppose - BTC is a steam train, that revolutionized hitherto horse-drawn transportation. A marvelous feat of engineering.
Suppose further that alt-coins are airplanes, ships and trucks.
In your case, I suspect you will say alt-coins are trains that run on spaghetti tracks and melt when it's too hot - that's fine, it doesn't matter.

What does matter is - each time there are supply problems with coal and the BTC train network has problems, the prices of air fares, shipyards and trucks also wildly jumps up and down. In your case, coal price rises cause havoc in the spaghetti rail business. When governments threaten to regulate those damn noisy train machines and shares in the steam train business dive, at the same time shares in airlines and shipping companies fall even more.

What I want to know, is how is this a healthy market? How does it make sense? Why should an event in the steam train business impact any other business at all? Maybe you don't like flying, or you get sea-sick on boats - OK, you don't have to like boats or airplanes... but why should developments in the train market impact those markets? Because that is basically the situation.

You are not sticking to the topic; I am not asking for a value judgment on the merits of alt-coins, or whether they are worth anything. I am asking you why a movement in BTC price should have any relationship with the price of alts. You talk about people having a choice, but the truth is that this choice is severely restricted and far less meaningful than it should be. The fact you evidently think investing in alts is a silly choice - that's fine But all this is not relevant to the question.


Let me phrase it some other way still.

If I asked you - Stompix, I have invented a new type of asset, and I need you to come up with a design for how a market to trade these assets would work. You diligently get to work, and come up with a model for a market that makes sense. I'd bet my life on it that the feature "prices of all assets are derived from and/or go up and down with the price of the top asset" would not be a part of that design.

Yet, that is the current crypto market design.


That the earth is not flat is a fact that can be proven by empirical study. Your answers are correct (albeit slightly biased against alts) if the question was "Explain to me how the prices of alt-coins work in the current market design" - but that is not the question. I guess what I am trying to illustrate is that the way the market is operating right now is very far from reasonable or sensible; and again, you are totally free and at liberty to not give a s**t about alt-coins, that's totally cool. But surely even if you totally don't care about alts, you still gotta admit that the influence of the price of BTC on their value is absolutely without any merit.

Take game tokens, for instance, like MANA or ENJ. They have absolutely nothing to do with BTC. BTC could disappear tomorrow, nothing in their neck of the woods would change. Yet, if BTC price moves, so does theirs. This is ridiculous; in-game items don't suddenly become worth less or more, the games they are used in do not depend on BTC, BTC has nothing to say or add to those ecosystems. Yet it directly impacts tens of thousands of users as their tokens change in value for no reason that has anything to do with the economies of said tokens. And just to be clear - I don't hold any of those and personally don't care much for them, but I DO care about the broader crypto landscape that is basically "held hostage" by the fortunes of BTC. Surely, even if you think alt coins are nonsensical, even you should think that to be incorrect

And yet again, this is not actually an answer to my question.
Even if ALL alt-coins, every single one of them, is a total scam, a useless waste of space that nobody should in their right mind want - why should the price of such a hunk of useless have anything to do with BTC? Why should its price go UP if BTC goes up? Down when BTC goes down? Even if the only "utility" it might have is to waste people's money and provide pointless work for dead-end projects... what does it have to do with BTC?

In fact - if you think BTC is so wonderful and fantastic - why would you want these totally useless coins to "take advantage" of BTC price rises...? If you think alts are dumb nonsense, wouldn't the world be a fairer place if they could not profit from BTC price gains...?

I am yet to hear why the value (or,. if you want, degree of uselessness, whatever) of DOT, ADA or ATOM should change because the value of BTC has changed. And let me re-iterate once again, because it looks like this distinction can be hard to keep in mind - I am not asking WHY, in the current market setup, it changes, but why it is rational and/or reasonable that this should be so.

Your opinion on whether alt-coins are useful, nonsense, great or a scam has zero bearing on this question.

On a personal note as an aside, if you think the DOT system makes "no improvements" on the BTC architecture I think you need to ask yourself how you define "improvement". And that's after convincing yourself that somehow magically bitcoin is the only software in the history of mankind where version 1.0 was the best one to be ever released and continues to be so more than a decade after launch.

OK so the price of the alt-coin is only tentatively correlated with its demand, that's the whole problem. At time X, with BTC at 40K, the price for a DOT is $40. At time X+3 hours with BTC tanking to 33K, the price for DOT is $24. Now - if you can please explain to me what, exactly, the price of BTC has made different about the utility, desirability or demand of DOT, I am dying to hear it. Of course, the answer is
"nothing" and that is exactly why having BTC trading pairs where the BTC volatility automatically impacts all other assets a really bad idea.

If you were tasked with designing a market for the trading of some type of asset... if your design included this kind of behavior as a feature, everybody would think it's a really crappy design. Yet here we are.

Yes! I am very pleased to see that you and I have indeed reached the same conclusion, which is that the main (or perhaps only) reason why alt-prices are so inextricably linked with the BTC price and its fortunes are those trading pairs. In fact, I have made an entire website about just this problem right here: https://delistbitcoin.com/ (apologies for the click-baity domain name, please excuse excuse my nod to populist rags)

Ok - well, thank you all for your answers and comments so far, let me process this and I shall come back later with a few thoughts...

Just for the record let me perhaps state my objectives/position... I first heard of Bitcoin back in 2010-2011 and was immediately sold on the vision... I believe most people, even a substantial part of hardcore crypto-afficionados, do not actually understand what a total gamechanger crypto is for, well, everything really. The fact non-governments can now make a functional medium of exchange, a programmable one no less, is possibly more revolutionary than the invention of the wheel

But - I greatly resent the fact that, as NeuroticFish already alluded to, the crypto space is filled with speculators, scam artists and similar short-term gain seeking actors that give the entire space a bad name, and obscure or render irrelevant the more... "ideological" side of it. Though to be fair, I am unable to condemn such people because, well, what are you gonna do, seeking to enrich oneself is hardly a crime... but they do screw things up and pollute the narrative.

What I want to see is an evolved, more serious, transparent and more accessible crypto-eco-system (not just market, though of course that's a big part of it) so the world at large may gradually start seeing decentralized information and value exchange systems as a viable alternative for the rather outdated systems of governance and management that we have today. I believe that BTC dominance, both in terms of market share and "marketing"/mind-space is detrimental to the speed at which this can be achieved, though I am no BTC hater

At any rate- thanks and I'll be back soon with more whatabouterism

That is indeed how it should be - the price moves freely and is not tied intimately to the US Dollar. I mean if the US economy will tank tomorrow because, say, it has been discovered that the GDP dropped by 10% due to COVID, then sure, many other currencies might also take a hit, though the impact would be far less than alt-coins take when there is some bad news about BTC.

I'd recommend opening two browser windows, open one, on, say, DOT, and the other on BTC, and just look how DOT is following every single BTC move for 90% of the time. Sure, if something awesome just happened in the DOT space and people are buying it like crazy it might escape BTC gravity for a while, but that happens quite rarely.

And so if DOT was a country, their whole economy would shrink 20% in value when BTC drops by, say, 8-12%, even though absolutely nothing has changed in DOTLand. The same factories are still making the same stuff, people working in them make the same amount of DOT, and a loaf of bread is still 0.034 DOT - yet, on the "global market" the DOT currency just lost a fifth of its value. For no discernable reason that can be blamed on the DOT economy...

Well - yes Though it is interesting you say make it look like it depends on Bitcoin because that actually is part of the problem
And I suppose I should have included stablecoins as de-facto equivalent of Fiat currencies, though I am no fan of USDT, to be clear.

Now - from a "BTC fundamentalist" point if view I perfectly understand the... not so flattering opinion about alt-coins, and given the amount of scams and crappy projects out there I can't say it is a surprising attitude, granted. But what I am concerned with primarily are "regular" folks that might want to invest in an alt-coin project because, well, they believe it to be a good project, and wish to buy the tokens that "run" the platform. Whether or not that is a wise investment is another story, but regardless of its merits, the price of BTC is not part of those merits in the majority of cases. Or, well, I am still waiting to hear a valid explanation why it would make sense that it actually is

See - by having this kind of market where BTC is basically the only game in town, I think it is reasonable to say that it makes the market as a whole into a mockery, and far harder to take seriously. There are quite a few "alt-coin" systems that actually are pretty good; maybe not in the eyes of BTC Believers, but certainly by, if you allow me to be so cheeky, more... "objective" standards In turn, this greatly delays that Satoshi-denominated future many of you wish would happen tomorrow. What's worse - it gives time to Central Banks to get with the program and devise their own crypto-similar systems and THAT, my dear fellows, is something we definitely don't want.

Ok - would you think it normal that you can buy any Nasdaq share in fractions of Apple or Google share...? (Where Apple and Google are assumed to be BTC and ETH respectively for the sake of the argument ie the top 2 assets)...?

That when Apple would get sued for, say, exploding batteries and its share drops 5%, all Nasdaq shares also drop, by at least double that...? Would anyone think that is a functioning market? Coz that's the crypto market.

Well - you are describing what the crypto market looks like, making a number of assumptions and value judgments in the process, some of which I am sure are reasonable. Of course the relationship with BTC is not 1-on-1 identical, but if you look at these graphs listed here: https://delistbitcoin.com/Evidence.html you will see that the vast majority of coins are pretty much Coin X-flavored BTC.

But again, you are describing what the historical situation is - not why it makes sense that it is thus. When the guys at Filecoin make a profit/loss overview, they calculate costs like hosting, staff salaries, bandwidth, insurance, etc. in US Dollars; But the value of the Filecoin token used to utilize their service is constantly shifting, in no small part due to BTC price moving, even though their service has nothing to do with BTC. Any impact by the BTC price on the Filecoin token, however small, has no merit - nothing about the Filecoin value proposition changes as a result of BTC becoming cheaper or more expensive.

Of course Crypto-general impacts such as, say, news about impending crypto regulation, etc - that this impacts all coins, that of course does make sense, and I also understand it is a novel and pioneering market with major fluctuations being fairly normal. What I do not understand is how anyone can expect the crypto space to be taken seriously if all alt-coins are basically BTC shadows.

Ok but back here in the real world and in the present, the vast majority of humans asses the value of a given service and whether it is a good deal or not in Fiat currencies. Now I am happy to agree this may not necessarily be the optimal solution and, yes, I know all the crypto-convert arguments why Fiat is also "made up" or a Ponzi scheme or [enter your pet theory here] and I can even follow the logic, but if I was to decide - hmm, should I invest in StorJ tokens, I will not be doing this on the basis of what BTC fundamentalists think the world should look like, but rather based on, you know, how it actually looks like, no offense

That there is some potential future world in which expressing the value of goods and services in Satoshis is going to be "the norm" and that such a world might actually be better - that's fine and I am not against believing this, but at the present moment telling 90%+ of people that something is "worth" 3453 Sats is virtually meaningless to them.

Ok - you did not actually answer my question, but instead gave me a rundown of crypto basics and realities. I get those - I've been doing crypto for some time. I expected this would happen, this is why I was so explicit But let me try with a more elaborate example

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If I want to, say, store my files on a system like StorJ (just as an example, I am not particularly interested in them) - this would cost me some dollar amount, like, let's say, 200 dollars per year for a Terabyte. Now, to pay for that service, I need to get their tokens, let's define that as 200 tokens, at $1 each. I buy those tokens.

Now - a few moments later, BTC falls by 2%, and even though I have absolutely nothing to do with BTC, the StorJ service would continue to exist is BTC would disappear, my tokens now have a different value, like, I don't know. $ 0.97 instead of the $1 that I paid for them.

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All I want to know, and please, this is the only thing I am asking:

Why is it reasonable, rational or in any way "correct" that this has happened with my StorJ tokens?

What has the change in BTC price seemingly changed to the value of the service I can purchase for these tokens?

*I am using StorJ merely coz it is a known example and its function has clearly zero to do with BTC.

I would like to ask a very simple question to all you Bitcoin lovers out here.

"Explain to me, why it makes rational sense that the prices of most alt-coins (in relation to USD/EUR/Fiat) should become different when the price of Bitcoin changes."

Note that I am not asking why this happens at present. To put it a bit differently - if a regular dude with no knowledge of the crypto market would ask you:

Why is it sensible and/or "right" that the price of a given alt-coin asset valuation goes up and down when the price of Bitcoin (in most cases, a seemingly unrelated asset) moves up and down? How does the value of said alt-coin become more or less.. why does it make sense that the BTC price de-facto "decides" that whatever actual utility the alt-coin asset enables me to make use of (in-game currency, computing time, storage space, etc.) can now be had for a different amount than a few moments ago?

And, again, just to be sure - please refrain from 'arguments' along the lines of:

- It has always been thus
- Coz alt-coins are [enter your derogatory description here]


and so on. I want to know... why is this the right way for this market to function. How does it make rational, economic sense.

Thank you

Dear Bitcoin Believers,

Having carefully studied various aspects of the crypto-markets both recently and over the course of the last few years, I have come to identify one particular feature of it that causes a great amount of disruption and distortion. I suspect that most people looking at the crypto space would not see this issue as a problem; in fact, I’d venture a guess to say most would not even see it as an issue at all. The issue, as the subject might suggest, is the existence of BTC trading pairs with other crypto-currencies (those so-called "alt-coins").

Now – I know what many of you will say, perhaps almost reflexively, dismissingly… that BTC trading pairs are the Crypto-market… that they form the essence of what makes it a thing in the first place. As you no doubt will guess, I strongly disagree with such an opinion, and I believe that the time has come to take a very critical look at the consequences of the existence of these trading pairs.

Contrary to what you might believe or be told by (often self-appointed) crypto-experts – the BTC price is not an impact because of the behavior of traders – it is an impact by default and by design, more often than not the consequence of traders in fact NOT acting at all, affecting the price of alt-coins merely because a BTC trading pair exists. Furthermore, alts falling faster and rising slower than BTC is caused by the Loss-Aversion Bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion), meaning that the impact of BTC is almost invariably negative.

There are very easy ways to see this effect – just look at the few non-trivial alt-coins that do not have a BTC trading pair, like DAO or MASK, and you will see that the value of those assets, though not free from BTC impacts, behave far more “naturally” and less erratic. Though of course there are many factors that impact price, the bottom line is that there is almost no justification for the BTC price being one of them.

At any rate – though I feel that logic alone is sufficient “reason” to understand this problem,
I have gone through the trouble of creating a website dedicated to this specific distortion.

You can find it at: https://delistbitcoin.com

I would kindly like to ask you to note that I am not doing this out of some selfish, greed-driven profit maximizing motive; my first and main concern is increasing the likelihood that a crypto-based economy can be created successfully. An economy, that is as free from centralized governmental and/or corporate influence and control as possible.

The greatly distorting and detrimental impact of the effect of BTC price on almost all alt-coins greatly impedes crypto-solutions being taken seriously, makes it harder to attract long-term pragmatic investment, and it significantly decreases the chances that such assets can be mature enough to form a serious alternative to Central-Bank issued crypto currencies, a development which might mean the end of liberties and freedom in any form you or our parents would recognize as such.

I hope that my efforts can form the starting point of a substantive and significant debate, and may lead to at least some experimentation and innovation to test my theory and provide empirical data that may prove its validity, or disprove it as misguided. I believe it so obvious that even suspending all BTC trading pairs for a couple of $50M/volume per day alt-coins for a period of 2-3 weeks would provide sufficient data see the difference, and would clearly show that BTC trading pairs are a major stumbling block in the evolution of the crypto space.

I thank you for reading, wish to invite you to take a look at the website, and to feel free and encouraged to discuss this idea and the solutions proposed. The site contains zero trackers, no downloads, just more TL;DR and a bunch of graphs

Do not buy LINDA on YoBit - they are on the old chain and you will not be able to put your coins into a local wallet to stake with. Avoid like the plague. Even CMC has put a warning on the Linda page to warn you of this. If you currently have LINDA coins on Yobit, sell for LTC, DOGE or BTC and move this to Cryptopia and rebuy (at a loss, most likely)

How is this FUD? Do you honestly believe someone might, on the basis of this rather innocuous post, decide that OMG LOL I gotta sell all my BTC now!!!11 or else there goes the Lambo...! Really? This isn't FUD, not even close. This is an opinion. Granted, not a very refined one, but certainly one that has at least a modicum of merit. BTC, compared to newer, more advanced block-chain systems, is pretty old-skool. Nothing wrong with old-skool per sé, but it is definitely true that the entire crypto-space would be helped in no small measure if BTC was no longer its poster-child front-page goto-representative. BTC will always be the first, and the most legendary. But it is time for new heroes to shine...

FUD, in case you are wondering, is the announcement of lies and presenting them as facts or at least seemingly legitimate reasons to be very worried. This thread is none of those things.

I've been paying attention to crypto since 2010; my profile here may be new, but I am by no means new to the subject. At this moment in time, as unpleasant it may sound to say, BTC is mostly a major pain in the butt. Don't get me wrong, I am an absolute Believer in Crypto-currency (and I don't mean this as a means to get a Lambo, but for actual, very profound and direly needed socially beneficial reasons) but Bitcoin is starting to become more of a hindrance than an asset, and this is for the following reasons:

• The technology that underlines it, while revolutionary upon its inception is not fit for purpose. The only true asset that it offers is the longevity and apparent robustness of its block-chain. But judged purely on its technical and performance merits, it’s thoroughly outclassed by several competing systems
• At present, Bitcoin dominates the public perception of what crypto-currencies are. More often than not, it is used as a synonym for all crypto-currencies when talking to a layman, and it does a tremendous disservice to all those projects out there that are working hard to create better, cheaper, more efficient and better performing systems
• Aside of being a method to store and transfer value, it supports no additional functionality of note. You might counter – so does money, and that might be true, but combined with the previous point it makes it a lot harder to make people understand crypto can be what you may justifiably call “Money 2.0”, something far more versatile and useful.
• Bitcoin dominates the pricing of alternative currencies to the point that the success of other projects seems to have very little impact on the pricing of its underlying crypto-token or asset. This is perhaps the most pernicious issue, hampering and interfering with their development, by eroding confidence, wearing down investors... some of which may be immature “When Moon!?” noobs, but many of which are people who really do their due diligence, research crypto-projects, invest wisely, yet fail to see the value of such tokens appreciate in an expected fashion; just because BTC happens to be falling. Why on Earth would this be a good thing… why would anyone (and I do mean anyone, including people who hold BTC) want this to happen??

I greatly respect and (still) love Bitcoin, and it has started a revolution. But I think it is time for a change in attitudes, a realization that while it certainly is the father of the revolution, it’s kids, nieces and cousins are in fact a much better product. Bitcoin will always have a special place in my heart, but it is time for the world to move on and we should be doing what we can to remove it from the dominating role it has both in the perception of crypto-currencies and in their objective valuation.

So I am to understand you see coins first and foremost as a means to generate profit? And that your fear of not getting that profit is what makes you believe we need regulations? Do you also realize that these same regulations which effectively serve to protect your Lambo investment will hamper and make more difficult the implementation of the actual benefits of crypto which are of enormous value to humanity? And I don't mean in terms of monetary profits, but in terms of freedom of expression and ability to monetize ones' skills and assets without government interference...

While it certainly would be good if there was some sort of respected and independent authority on crypto-currencies, I think it would be difficult for them to do their job, given the various reasons and motivations for the people that invest in crypto and get involved with it. On the one hand we got the Lambo Moon crowd who is in it just for the money and couldn't care less about the world-changing opportunities that the technology makes possible, and on the other there are the Believers who see its potential and care far less about short-term profits. How do you evaluate a crypto-asset when 'serving' one group is often contradictory with 'serving' the other?

Of the 1600+ currencies listed (and, note, that this is by no means an exhaustive list, there's plenty of coins waiting in the wings to be listed on CMC, and lots of coins that don't care about such listing) I'm confident that at least 400 are run by honest, decent, committed and able teams that genuinely want their product to work out. That still leaves us with 5-10 coins per 'business area' competing with each other. Evidently, not all of them will make it, despite the most sincere and honest of intentions.

In regards to regulation - I am starting to believe that we do not need regulations, and ought to be indifferent to them. The advantages of having them are for the most part of interest to the money-making crowd, not to the Believers (roughly speaking). I am no libertarian but I strongly believe that hoping for regulations to mature the crypto-market is a poisoned chalice - yes, the market will be more 'stable', but ultimately it will (again) put too much control in the hands of the powers that be. Crypto is here to dissolve power and further the right of humans to self-organize and create their own economies. In the long run, regulation will not greatly enhance the chances for success for these highly desirable aims and goals...