I know that the price of cryptos is driven by supply/demand but how does this correlate to the utility of the coin?
You guessed it right. Prices are mainly driven by the ratio of supply and demand. That's typically anything that is traded in this world. This is including oil, gold, rare metals you name it. And this has nothing to do with the utility of the coin. Why should it anyway ? Well, if there are exciting news or events coming up for a certain coin then that would push the people to buy more of that coin so the price goes up. But that's not always the case.
What's going on right now is that people understand how the market goes. As long as BTC is going up all the other coins almost have no chance to rise as everyone buys into it. Once it stops going up, people sell and look for other coins that have a chance. The best practice is to sell BTC once the price is high enough and buy into any other coin (as most of the altcoins will be dumped and have a lower price at that time.)
For example, the big banks have now decided to use the Etherum platform which has caused the coins price to skyrocket. But I'm confused as to how they relate. With stocks obviously if the company is performing good then the stock price will raise but cryptos aren't stocks.
This has nothing to do with anything. Banks aren't the things that people in crypto look up to. In fact, if whatever coin is backed by a bank/government most of the crypto lovers will stay away from it.
So will the future utility of a coin have a lasting effect on the coins price or is it all completely supply/demand with trading? Because if it's nothing more than trading it kind of undermines the entire utility. I know bitcoin is used as a store of wealth but my question is about alt coins.
Some do have a usage and some don't. That's a straight up fact. But most of the people are just looking for profit opportunities so the latter isn't an issue as long as they're making more.
