How are bitcoin and alt price charts connected?

[WinslowIII]

Before 2017, bitcoin had most of the cryptocap market share, something like 80-90%. When an alt pumped, bitcoin price typicially didn't budge. Now, when one of the major coins move they all move with it. My first question is how is this happening? when the demand for bitcoin goes up and the price goes up, why are pretty much the top 50 coins going up as well? Same with when the price goes down. I don't believe that people all of a sudden put money into all the coins at once, something else is going on maybe someone can explain?
The main point of concern I have is that if this continues, it's going to be hard to get bitcoin price into 6 figures because of all these stupid shitcoins that have to get dragged along with it.
How and why is this an all or nothing game? Thoughts?

[fabiorem]

The whales do swaps between bitcoin and the major altcoins, that is, ethereum, litecoin, dash, monero and ripple. From these they do swaps with the other altcoins, and from these back to bitcoin.

The swaps are probably timed between the whales. In altcoin markets is very common to have pump and dump groups, which are very restricted (those from discord are scams). The money these groups make on the altcoin markets flows back to bitcoin, increasing its price while the alts go down. Then they repeat the process.

This can only work in bull markets, as in bear markets they would need to sell leased coins, or deal with derivatives, and only a few exchanges allows that.

Thats why Im not a fanatical maximalist. Although I only hold bitcoin and a few litecoin, Im not going to dismiss the altcoins for their use.

[Adriano2010]

They are connected because most of altcoins are traded with bitcoin, and people ussually exchange bitcoin for altcoins or altcoin for bitcoin, and the price of altcoins goes down because now most altcoins was selled for bitcoin.

[WinslowIII]

They are connected because most of altcoins are traded with bitcoin, and people ussually exchange bitcoin for altcoins or altcoin for bitcoin, and the price of altcoins goes down because now most altcoins was selled for bitcoin.

But what does this have to do with price moves that have all coins moving in concert at the same time?

[webtricks]

Now, when one of the major coins move they all move with it. My first question is how is this happening? when the demand for bitcoin goes up and the price goes up, why are pretty much the top 50 coins going up as well? Same with when the price goes down.

There is one important thing you are missing here.
When you see that all coins are either green or red, it is because you are viewing their value in 'USD' on CoinMarketCap.
Now when the price of Bitcoin rise, other coins usually remain stable or fall. But since the value of Bitcoin is increasing in terms of USD, value of alts also seem like increasing.
I give you example. Suppose Bitcoin is $8000 and Ethereum is 0.03 BTC or $240. Now Bitcoin increases by $300 and reaches $8300 and ETH falls to 0.029 because investors put their money out of ETH and put it in BTC. Now, in reality ETH price has fallen but when you view it on CoinMarketCap in 'USD' market, it will show ETH value in green too becuase in terms of USD, it has risen by $0.7.
So whenever Bitcoin goes up, just compare the percentage of rise with other alts. Usually the percentage of rise of other coins is lower than bitcoin.

[WinslowIII]

Now, when one of the major coins move they all move with it. My first question is how is this happening? when the demand for bitcoin goes up and the price goes up, why are pretty much the top 50 coins going up as well? Same with when the price goes down.

There is one important thing you are missing here.
When you see that all coins are either green or red, it is because you are viewing their value in 'USD' on CoinMarketCap.
Now when the price of Bitcoin rise, other coins usually remain stable or fall. But since the value of Bitcoin is increasing in terms of USD, value of alts also seem like increasing.
I give you example. Suppose Bitcoin is $8000 and Ethereum is 0.03 BTC or $240. Now Bitcoin increases by $300 and reaches $8300 and ETH falls to 0.029 because investors put their money out of ETH and put it in BTC. Now, in reality ETH price has fallen but when you view it on CoinMarketCap in 'USD' market, it will show ETH value in green too becuase in terms of USD, it has risen by $0.7.
So whenever Bitcoin goes up, just compare the percentage of rise with other alts. Usually the percentage of rise of other coins is lower than bitcoin.

Yes, but why do the alts go up and down in usd whenever bitcoin makes significant usd price moves? Wouldn't it make more sense for the coins to go up and down independantly? I mean, why does ethereum for example go up in usd at all when bitcoin goes up in usd? I seem to be missing something for this to make sense. I don't really follow the stock market, do all the biggest stocks tend to go up and down in unison also?

[Gozie51]

Yes, but why do the alts go up and down in usd whenever bitcoin makes significant usd price moves? Wouldn't it make more sense for the coins to go up and down independantly? I mean, why does ethereum for example go up in usd at all when bitcoin goes up in usd? I seem to be missing something for this to make sense. I don't really follow the stock market, do all the biggest stocks tend to go up and down in unison also?

It is because of the technology that all of them get their project from which bitcoin happens to be the first. The blockchain technology binds all cryptocurrency together. I might be wrong but not totally wrong, but this is what I think in my opinion.

[Naida_BR]

Bitcoin price and altcoin price is strongly connected as you can see every pairing in exchange of altcoins is with Bitcoin.
So when bitcoin price fluctuates it can impact directly altcoins. I hope it helps, I tried to give an explanation with simple words.

[WinslowIII]

Bitcoin price and altcoin price is strongly connected as you can see every pairing in exchange of altcoins is with Bitcoin.
So when bitcoin price fluctuates it can impact directly altcoins. I hope it helps, I tried to give an explanation with simple words.

Yes, I see that - it's obvious. The question I'm asking is why? And if this continues, the only way bitcoin will cross $100k is to drag all these shitcoin marketcaps with it, won't that make it much more difficult? So much more money needs to enter the crypto space, seems such a waste of new money entering the space on all these worthless shitcoins with no purpose.
The #2 coin, eth for example, no longer has the only thing it is good for - creating scam icos. Wtf purpose does even have now? and who the hell is buying that rather than bitcoin, which obviously has so much more going on?

[Harlot]

Because its related to Bitcoin being the market leader in terms of market share. Being the leader in the market can give a certain influence on everything around it since it signifies the greater portion of the money involved in the crypto market. Price movements tend to reflect what BTC is doing since generally when BTC is bullish all other altcoins are following suit as it signifies the market being bullish as well.  Other than the influence you must take note that  having the biggest market share only means it is holding the largest sum of money in the market , that is why  it has a big influence around it.

[wheelz1200]

If alts dump, especially the shitcoins bitcoin does not really move with it.  Conversely when bitcoin moves in big jumps or drops it has a significant effect on the alt prices and volume.  Most people are in a hold pattern but wake up when btc moves.

[Vaskiy]

If alts dump, especially the shitcoins bitcoin does not really move with it.  Conversely when bitcoin moves in big jumps or drops it has a significant effect on the alt prices and volume.  Most people are in a hold pattern but wake up when btc moves.

Going through the comparison between the growth chart of bitcoin and other top altcoins in the market it can be easily found. Maybe the growth percentage will vary, but there is true growth with bitcoins and altcoins at the same time. As in the quote there will be significant price jumps between the two and mostly growth of bitcoin is followed by altcoins.

[exstasie]

Before 2017, bitcoin had most of the cryptocap market share, something like 80-90%. When an alt pumped, bitcoin price typicially didn't budge. Now, when one of the major coins move they all move with it. My first question is how is this happening? when the demand for bitcoin goes up and the price goes up, why are pretty much the top 50 coins going up as well? Same with when the price goes down. I don't believe that people all of a sudden put money into all the coins at once, something else is going on maybe someone can explain?

This type of relationship has always existed; it's not something that sprung up in 2017. Bitcoin and altcoins have always been correlated. This dynamic was definitely present during the 2013-2014 market too. But back in the 2013 bubble there were only 50-100 altcoins at the time. The dominance/market share we see today probably has more to do with the proliferation of thousands of altcoins with inflated supplies than anything else.

The main point of concern I have is that if this continues, it's going to be hard to get bitcoin price into 6 figures because of all these stupid shitcoins that have to get dragged along with it.
How and why is this an all or nothing game? Thoughts?

Altcoins are bullish for Bitcoin. Altcoin speculation pulls thousands and thousands of liquid BTC off the fiat markets. Altcoin speculators buy BTC off fiat order books to trade against altcoins = increased demand for BTC and lower available supply. All the bitcoins trading in the BTC/altcoin markets aren't available to be dumped on the BTC/fiat markets.

[WinslowIII]

Before 2017, bitcoin had most of the cryptocap market share, something like 80-90%. When an alt pumped, bitcoin price typicially didn't budge. Now, when one of the major coins move they all move with it. My first question is how is this happening? when the demand for bitcoin goes up and the price goes up, why are pretty much the top 50 coins going up as well? Same with when the price goes down. I don't believe that people all of a sudden put money into all the coins at once, something else is going on maybe someone can explain?

This type of relationship has always existed; it's not something that sprung up in 2017. Bitcoin and altcoins have always been correlated. This dynamic was definitely present during the 2013-2014 market too. But back in the 2013 bubble there were only 50-100 altcoins at the time. The dominance/market share we see today probably has more to do with the proliferation of thousands of altcoins with inflated supplies than anything else.

The main point of concern I have is that if this continues, it's going to be hard to get bitcoin price into 6 figures because of all these stupid shitcoins that have to get dragged along with it.
How and why is this an all or nothing game? Thoughts?

Altcoins are bullish for Bitcoin. Altcoin speculation pulls thousands and thousands of liquid BTC off the fiat markets. Altcoin speculators buy BTC off fiat order books to trade against altcoins = increased demand for BTC and lower available supply. All the bitcoins trading in the BTC/altcoin markets aren't available to be dumped on the BTC/fiat markets.

You make excellent points, all of which I agree with. However, you and nobody else has answered my question - why do the alts go up when the bitcoin price goes up and why do they all fall when the bitcoin price falls? It's not like a chain reaction, they all seem to move together like it's synchronized. How is this possible? I just want to understand the mechanics of it, wtf is happening on the exchanges for this all to happen at once? It just makes no sense to me.

[exstasie]

You make excellent points, all of which I agree with. However, you and nobody else has answered my question - why do the alts go up when the bitcoin price goes up and why do they all fall when the bitcoin price falls? It's not like a chain reaction, they all seem to move together like it's synchronized. How is this possible? I just want to understand the mechanics of it, wtf is happening on the exchanges for this all to happen at once? It just makes no sense to me.

The crypto markets are way more algo driven than a few years ago. I could be wrong but I think it just looks synchronized because the trading algos and bots being run on exchanges today are much, much faster than they used to be. Years ago it was all humans manually trading and some really crappy bots.

But by and large I'm thinking the altcoin markets are still just reacting to moves in the BTC market.

[wheelz1200]

You make excellent points, all of which I agree with. However, you and nobody else has answered my question - why do the alts go up when the bitcoin price goes up and why do they all fall when the bitcoin price falls? It's not like a chain reaction, they all seem to move together like it's synchronized. How is this possible? I just want to understand the mechanics of it, wtf is happening on the exchanges for this all to happen at once? It just makes no sense to me.

The crypto markets are way more algo driven than a few years ago. I could be wrong but I think it just looks synchronized because the trading algos and bots being run on exchanges today are much, much faster than they used to be. Years ago it was all humans manually trading and some really crappy bots.

But by and large I'm thinking the altcoin markets are still just reacting to moves in the BTC market.

Exactly.  There are so many people running bots (just look at all the fractional trading happening, that's not people selling and buying.  Its across most every coin so when markets start to heat up or cool and more buys or sells come on one sided, it triggers bots to move the price.  That's why it seems to be synchronized

[LimLims]

It's very simple and logically correct if you see in the right perspective of analyzing the price of both Bitcoins and rest of the altcoins.
First of all when the price of Bitcoin increases the price of altcoins too increases due to demand.
As All the altcoins including Bitcoins follow the policy of supply and demand, therefore this thing happens.
Hope you got something cleared in your mind.

[hatshepsut93]

Alts are very strongly traded against BTC, so if we imagine that alts are pegged to BTC at some fixed price that would mean that alts will mimic all Bitcoin's price changes one to one. On practice there's a lot of deviation from this, but the core idea holds true - alts will always move in the same direction that Bitcoin does. The most common pattern is that Bitcoin rises and alts rise too, but slowly (which means that their BTC price tanks), but then they catch up when BTC fixates on a new level. When BTC crashes, alts crash even harder, and then rebound a bit when BTC stops falling.

[Sanitough]

I can see that this topic is relevant to what is happening with the market, especially its trends.
I have never use a data yet to analyze this but based on my observation, I am seeing that when altcoins rise, altcoins will also follow.

At the earlier stage before the 2017 bull run, I noticed that when bitcoin pump, altcoins will dump, and they do the opposite most of the time.
Maybe that time people have equal trust on bitcoin and the altcoins market, and ICO projects that time are also strong unlike now, they are not selling anymore.

The price movement is just temporary, but if we will look at the general view, we will clearly see that when bitcoin rises, altcoins always do follow.

Shitcoins? Of course they also do follow, we have a lot of shitcoins in the market waiting for the right timing, there are people who pump it, and there are people who got FOMO on this, it's a normal thing, they'll never ceased to exist here.

[Caladonian]

If alts dump, especially the shitcoins bitcoin does not really move with it.  Conversely when bitcoin moves in big jumps or drops it has a significant effect on the alt prices and volume.  Most people are in a hold pattern but wake up when btc moves.

Mostly happened, each time bitcoin pumped that hard most of the alts are being pumped as well, supporters who earned from bitcoin investment will make some moves for their favorite alts and make a good run to it, diversion becomes very usual inside this market.

Bitcoin break the silence and all the existing quality projects will make good bounce.