Hi there. With your ETH example. Lets just replace it with btc since thats what im working with. I basically have money in betting sites where even though the balance is in usd... btc is the way to deposit/withdraw on those sites. So when i want to make a withdraw, they pay me out in btc. I usually do this only if i want to move some money from a betting to another betting site or... if i want to buy an altcoin. Thus receive btc... then go to shapeshift and sell btc for the altcoin. But i wont use shapeshift anymore due to the high fees... but also because there are many coins shapeshift does not have.
The other thing is i have zero interest in holding any new btc from now on due to the price. So for example, if btc is price is 15000. Let say i withdraw 5000 usd so i get around 0.33 btc from the betting site to my bitcoin wallet. You say you could then wait a bit and if btc goes up, you can then sell your btc to usdt to get a higher usdt balance. But of course if it goes down and then you sell it for usdt, you get less. The thing is i don't want to have any bitcoin at these prices as its already way too high. Does that make sense? I basically only want bitcoin from now on only to buy altcoins... nothing else. So if thats the case, and since right now im waiting to buy certain altcoins but waiting for prices to drop, best to just withdraw whatever usd amount of worth of bitcoin i want now... so when the time comes when altcoins hit the low price, i could then buy btc immediately with my usdt and then immediately buy the altcoin right? Because i dont want to have to wait many hours or a day or even longer to buy an altcoin because at the moment, i need to withdraw btc from a betting site... then wait for btc to hit my wallet, before i could buy the altcoin via shapeshift. And since i want to use bittrex to buy altcoins, then best to just keep usdt balance there right? Of course i would like it if i request btc and then i get it sent to me immediately. That way i would send it to bittrex and then i wont even need to have itc converted to usdt since i would be buying it immediately right assuming prices is around the same?
I get your point, BTC is too volatile right now to function as a stable currency.
Is not always necessary to convert USDT to BTC first then altcoins, some of the larger altcoins can be traded directly from USDT.
Yes , in your case, since you want a stable market value it would be best to keep USDT before trading, because Bittrex don't support fiat.
With the locking in profits, since i want to buy altcoins, then obviously do this at bittrex right? But if i only am planning to do this with btc, eth and litecoin for example... thus coins traded against fiat only on those sites, then its best to do it there as oppose to bittrex? Someone mentioned bittrex is not even needed unless you buy/trade altcoins right? And here is the other thing. If you look at the btc buy/sell price on bittrex, its like over 700 dollars less. If thats the case, then why would anyone sell btc on bittrex unless they are going to buy altcoins? gdax/coinbase are paying over 700 dollars more for a bitcoin than on bittrex. Can you explain this? Because that would mean i would be selling btc for a lot lower price on bittrex whether its to sell it immediately for an altcoin or sell it for usdt where i could use it later anytime to buy altcoins or btc/eth/litecoin etc.
Depends on which exchange you like best, and if the exchange support the altcoins you want.
If you are just trading BTC, ETH,LTC and fiat, GDAX would be the appropriate exchange.
Well, as you said, sometimes it is because of the altcoins factor that keep people on certain exchanges. The prices can fluctuate a lot on different exchanges. GDAX may have higher BTC price right here and now, but the situation can drastically change in a few seconds/minutes, BTC is extremely volatile. As seen here
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets , the price gap on BTC right now is $5274 between cheapest and most expensive exchanges.
Sometimes you can get lucky and stumble upon sellers that dump huge amounts for under/over market price, and therefore drive the price up/down a bit.
Good luck with your trades!