Topic: How do you know when you are in profit? USD or Satoshi? (Read 6069 times)

Always trying to trade comparing with btc, because I want to have more btc. As bitcoin is a gold, I want to have more gold) if you want to increase your money just buy altcoins and hold)

Yeah, as long as you're higher in USD as compared to when you bought you're in profit. The hard decision is to decide how long to hold to still remain in profit and cut out loss.

If you are confident in the future of the crypto currency and think that Bitcoin will be used in the future as the main method of payment for goods, then you need to take into account the profit in Satoshi and not in USD.

If the instrument is trading only for BTC that USD value is a fraud and looking at it can lose your money. If you can sell your altscoin for USD/usdt than go ahead and check USD value

I see it this way, once you have your money in the Satoshis or in Bitcoins, you'll get its equivalent when it converts into the dollars. So I think they're the same. The apps and softwares we use to monitor the prices also use the conversion rates at current price and so whether it's in Satoshis or dollars then they're the same. That's my opinion though!

You are trading cryptocurrency right?? Since you are trading with crypto, your main basis is in satoshi and not in USD. Your main goal as a trader is to increase your number of Bitcoin in an exchange you are using. Most of the alts use BTC as a pair but unless you are using a Fiat currency pairing like EOS/USD pairing then you must use USD as your basis.

The market price only checks when you want to trade the coin in the case you are a day trader I give more preference to the transfer coin dominance rate which is the true measure for the value of a coin

For sure there are people who do look up on btc chart and seeing if the price is still low or high for them to make decisions either they would sell or decide to hold it up because they cant see big profits when the price of bitcoin is still low. Prices do really correlate to each other specially when you are computing for profits. This thing would really matter but there are some people who dont really matter on satoshi since they are always seeing on usd value.

I was thinking about this again earlier today and wondered if there is a way in graphically comparing the both?
Like on tradingview showing moving averages for example but then showing the the BTC/USD rate in the same chart?
Does anyone here do that? Showing both the chart of an altcoin and that of btc/usd next to eachother in order to figure out when to buy/sell?

Always compare it to Satoshi

I always compare alts investments to how much I would have made if I had just bought bitcoins and not alts. They are probably the best real indicator of price.

For example, u buy a coin at $5 and it goes to 10. Bitcoin however went from 5k to 15k. If you had just not sold bitcoin for alts, you would have made more.

Hello everyone,
nice discussion, thank you for helping.

So let me create an example to see if I got this right:

If I have today an altcoin that is -10% USD compared with the USD price I have bought it, but it is +20% compared with bitcoin price (because bitcoin value has decreased since the time I used it to buy the altcoin) It is a good decision to trade the altcoin now for bitcoin, even if I am losing in terms of USD. So this way (and in particular if I plan to hodl my bitcoin for the long run) I can have more profit than just hodling that altcoin until gaining profit in USD. Correct?

Tks!

You are in profit when the USD amount is bigger than the USD amount you came in with it is as simple as that. But I think most proper traders like to measure in BTC because it makes the game harder and I myself am a competitive person and I want to win in the most competitive environment. The choice is yours but if you play the harder game and can win it, you probably stand to gain more that way than by playing the other way. Although it is easier for the brain to understand when your up in USD your up in USD. Again the choice is yours, don't think too hard about it now!

I used to look into dollar value but I don't think you should do that. I was trading and seeing my $ value increase, but my bitcoin value was decreasing. We were in complete bull market at that time and I was happy, thinking I was doing great trade. Then I realized that if I had just hold my bitcoins during those bull runs, I would have much more $ than what I was actually making. So although I was seeing my bankroll increase, I was actually losing money, because I was losing bitcoin.

I think you should always check you profit in bitcoins. Notice that this works for a bear market as well. If bitcoin is falling, you should of course sell it to dollars. By doing this, you will see that although your dollar stack might be the same, your bitcoin value is actually increasing again, because if you buy at a lower price you will get more bitcoins out of it. You will know you are doing great in a bear market when you see both your bitcoin and $ bankroll increasing, and you can do this if you manage to buy the oversold bounces.

I always take notes if I purchase coins from exchange platforms. I write down my buying satoshi values so I don't forget them. I also write down usd value of my buy orders to calculate my profit in the best way.

First of all we are on this forum because we do believe on bitcoin mainly but talking already on full adoption then this thing would really be just a dream.Seeing on current issues and news then i would say its not really possible anymore but somehow it do manage to increase its price.All of us are hoping to hold lots of btc because we do see its potential.Back to topic when i do profit i do usually look on btc value too, im not seeing USD rate since it do change anytime.

Many thanks for this interesting thread. These are curious days when the streets are red with blood. 😲
This thread may be highly relevant. My thoughts...
Checking my portfolio in the USD valuation tells me I'm down plenty in these first weeks of 2018.
The BTC value however has gone up noticeably more, of course due to the 'correction'. So why should I look at the USD value? To see that I'm losing fiat? That's ridiculous. I got into this game because I hope and believe btc has a bright future ahead. I'm not talking about using it to buy coffees or pizzas with it but that it will be, as it already more or less is now, a reserve world currency, which, as the gold standard once before, will be a true store of value. So consequently I'm keeping a close look at the amount of BTC I'm accumulating while believing BTC will bounce back eventually. I'm in it for the long run. Don't get me wrong, I believe in the future of some altcoins as well but I believe eventually they will be the silvers, bronzes and coppers of the gold Bitcoin.
Please share your thoughts!

Only Bitcoin can be compared to cash.  All other coins must use satoshi.
 
The dollar price is calculated from Bitcoin's price.  The only way to know if your coin went up is to look at Satoshi.
 
When people compare alt coins with price, I understand that they do not understand.

This would be my first message here. As you would understand, i jumped into cryptocurrency world very late.
I started to buy little bit btc and trading with some altcoins 3 weeks ago. I ended up reading this thread :p Because i noticed even some altcoins i invested raised since my start point, at the end my money (which i check usd equivalent) didnt go up well.

First of all, the main reason seems to be transferring and trading process (i am not using wallet yet since i want to learn more about this world first). The fee i paid to cex.io while transferring my main money from bank account, buying some btc or eth from cex.io (which also has fee), transferring by btc to binance (also transfer fee which is 0.01 btc), trading with some altcoins (some small fee in binance). And if want to cashout my profit, i need to do reverse process which will lower my profit more and unless i really don't invest and gain big profit, i will have no real profit in my bank account.

About the main topic which is this thread about it is also tricky for me. I really don't know how to make profit even my coins raise
Because lets say the xrp i have raised 40% in usd or in btc since i bought. But what does that mean? btc might get lowered in the meantime comparing to usd. So if i want to cashout my profit, i see there is no difference in usd even xrp raised 40%. And considering the fees for converting xrp to btc, transferring to cex.io, withdrawing as usd will make me losing money even.

i know i wrote in complicated way since i am confused a lot about all this :p

when you say satoshi, you mean btc right?  Im curious what do most people here look at in terms of profit?  I mean shouldnt usd be what you should be looking at?

In money management terms, I think of BTC as the market, and gaining in terms of BTC is considered outperforming the market. It may also be sensible to think of the market as a mix of BTC and ETH

I am not able to look at the buy price of the alt coins after a few days on major exchanges like Binance?

Is there any way that I can look at the buy price and the current price and calculate the profit based on those prices? Please do let me know.

Where can you see the satoshis?

You need to maintain a record in which you have you list down all the details regarding buying of the bitcoins which you have in your wallet. Analyze the market price whenever you want to know whether you are going in profit or loss.

Compare the current market price of bitcoin with that amount at which you bought those bitcoins. Taking the difference in between will help you know the current statistics.

I think fully your descision in which way you want to.make profit but I think you should count your profit on satoshi then you ll be profitable in both way in $$ more and also your satoshi increasing means your investment is getting double and also btc price will move thus you ll make a great profit.

For me, I always want to increase my satoshi number. Thus, the increase in profit is the increase in the number of satoshi

For me its always important to look at my initial investment versus my current investment value. As the initial investment was most of the time done via Bitcoin, as most markets for alts are BTC / alt, it makes no sense to look at the dollar value there. Some people disagree, but thats how I judge my investments. With the current rally of Bitcoin my overall profits have nearly vanished from this perspective (clearly had too much alts), but USD wise Im still in good profit, but as I dont plan to cash out to fiat anytime soon, I just measure it in BTC and therefore Im way in a loss compared to have just held on my BTC that I initially had.

I usually take profit by both BTC and USD, i spilited my investment into 2 different exchanges. So decrease risk of holding coin

it easy it only math man
example : you have 1 bitcoin and its worth 15k$ today , tomorrow it worth 16k$ => you profit 1k$ in USD
when you want to calculate profit in something just change all of them in to USD

Just compare with the price , i usually compare with the USD price to spot how much i made.

Recently Litecoin upped about 50% in usd price so I felt a little bad because I had just traded litcoin for bitcoin thinking that bitcoin would have I faster increase in the long run.
But then when looking at the litecoin price chart I see that the price in bitcoin for one litecoin has steadily been going down the last three months, which means I've been getting more litcoin per bitcoin if I'm using bitcoin as a reference. So If I've understood It right, if one litecoin becomes cheaper and cheaper to buy in bitcoins as time pass by then that means that bitcoin is actually increasing in value faster than litecoin?

For me, all of the altcoin can be your reference and also in dollars because now a days all of these cryptocurrent has a dollar value. And their values changes from time to time. So if you choose satoshi as your reference you will know if you gain or not when to convert it to dollar, same as btc to dollar but btc to satoshi has a fix value. If im not mistaken 0.001btc is equal to 100 000 satoshi. So you will know if your satoshi increase its value when bitcoin increases its value. Same goes to other altcoins, the have value in dollar that changes every single day and these altcoin can be convert to other altcoins and also converted to bitcoin. So there's so many reference that you can choose depending on your point of view. What really matters is that if your going to invest on that altcoin and know if your investment increase its value or you lose a certain amount.

This is a very good thread. I think it's crucial to pick a 'reference currency' otherwise you will never know if you are gaining or losing, as you already pointed out. Choosing the right currency to be a reference is not so easy though. Consider dollars and other fiat currency are inflationary, so their value decrease as time goes by. Yet Bitcoin is very volatile, so it's difficult to choose BTC as a reference currency as well.

I use blockfolio to easily see the USD change in value even if I am trading against bitcoin.

I've got more tips in my walkthrough: https://decryptionary.com/what-is-cryptocurrency/introduction-to-cryptocurrency/

Cryptocurrency is always changing value if we measure it in usd we are gaining profit since the price of bitcoin is increasing fast in the past month you don't need to measure the usd you should focus in the price of bitcoin and amount of your bitcoin. if bitcoin price was increase its value except that the price value is increase and you are gaining profit or if you increase the amount of your bitcoin it can increase also the profit but there is more possibility that you gain more profit if the price of bitcoin will increase..

Whether you measure it in cryptocurrency or USD, as long as your capital has increased then you get profit.
But usually people like to cash out their profit in form of fiat currency, so they compare the value of bitcoin worth in USD which more reliable/stable than fluctuate digital currency (volatile). If you want to get profits as soon as possible, than you should measure bitcoin value worth in fiat currency but if you love to hold bitcoin then it doesn't matter as long as your bitcoin keep growing.

The better thing to do is measure it in btc or satoshis. As we are actually dealing with bitcoins and not really the USD value. If you are earning in BTC then you should be measuring it in that and not USD as the latter cannot be influenced (unless you are a damned whale who can make a big ass impact on prices).

Good explanation. But I never had any confusion for measuring my profit losses but after reading OP's concern I just got fe doubts whether I am doing right or not. I guess profit calculations could be not by both USD and satoshi levels and like you said where we are trading and what we are trading will give us clear idea on how to measure profits.

I take profits in BTC since the value for USD is just too volatile right now. Also, I cash out whenever I needed to and not to book profits unlike most traders are doing. This is to ensure that I would be getting the maximum profit that I want from the entry point that I had.

I guess for altcoin trading the profit decider must be number of satoshi where in bitcoin trading against fiats, fiat value should be taken into consideration for profit/loss calculations.

Honestly we do not need to have any confusion here on basis or against what we are trading that should be taken for considering profit and loss calculations.

In trading pair notation like x/y : x must denote as the trading asset and y is the profit decider. In BTC/USD, dollars must be the profit decider and in LTC/BTC, bitcoins must be the profit decider.

First of all when you investing in Cryptocurrencies, you invest BTC not USD. So btc is your base money and profits must be calculated in terms of satoshis.
So when you invest in cryptocurrencies, you need to follow either of the one assumption below to to determine profits-
1. Bitcoin is equivalent to money, not investment
Or
2. Recognize bitcoin as first investment and cryptocurrencies be secondary investment. So calculate cryptocurrency/BTC profits first in satoshis term then calculate final profits in terms of USD/BTC @ you bought and sell BTC.

Should be USD.  Altcoins are their own things.

While they're still cryptocurrencies, a diversified collection of cryptocurrencies is not the same as short-term trading into Bitcoin.

I always use Bitcoin is value for calculate my profit, because I trading BTC/Altcoins and I will make profit with Bitcoin, not is USD. I want earning more Bitcoin before it very popular, reach to highest price and very difficult when earning it. Every month, I sell some Bitcoin to FIAT and use it as salary for my life

Definitely bitcoins (in Satoshi) because the price of bitcoin in USD is moving so much. I just think it's an absurd idea to think in terms of fiat. For example, you have 1BTC, you traded altcoins, then you earned 0.1BTC. You now have 1.1BTC. But because the price of bitcoin has decreased in the process, the value of 1.1BTC is less than the value of 1BTC before. That's totally weird that you've made more bitcoins but since you measure your profit in terms of USD, you lost?

Most times I don't even know the price of bitcoin in USD just because it's not relevant unless I have to cash out.

You can't also disregard the rate in dollars when you look at your earnings because that's the rate you'll get when you withdraw or transfer to your bank account. I agree with you that of course your earnings should be counted in the amount of btc that increased but you still would have to consider the current exchange rate before you withdraw

Do not based in USD cause bitcoins is flactuating.
The best is to based in bitcoins for example you have 0.02 or 65$ in USD price and becomes 0.025 so you earn 0.005 but in btc 0.025 is just 60$ so you lose in USD and you win in btc. that's called price is down and but bitcoins is up . all you  need to do is hold your bitcoins anv wait for 10,000 $ price keep holding

It seems to me you are new in trading either forex or crypto currency. When you are trading crypto currency dollar value should not be the main focus in terms of profit but bitcoin value, this is because some times one may be making profit in bitcoin and the dollar value of the profit is decreasing this could happens as a result of a decrease in the value of Bitcoin to dollar and not necessary means you are not making profit in your trading.

It's to a large extent matter of personal choice as already said by the other senior members and my personal choice and preference is bitcoin gain. I bought a coin when it was at a lower value in bitcoin and sold it at a higher value in bitcoin so obviously I made a profit simple. In any case I am more interested in accumulating and possessing bitcoins than USD.

There are some scenario here that can happen and depends from which perspective you see the "profit"

If you bought bitcoin with fiat money then you value the coins in fiat, and even if your balance is less than you had it means that you are in profit in fiat.

At the other side you can;t say that you are in profit if you plan to hold for a long time the bitcoins because your balance is less so this is a loss.

Of course, in USD. Because that's the currency you will be spending at the moment. Maybe in the distant future where all things are paid in BTC or something else.

USD profits may happen automatically when you have finished off your trading in satoshi profits. It means USD prices may not within our control but making more satoshi than the initial capital must be the only task we need to focus while trading.

That is the problem when it comes especially to altcoins trading, as bitcoin price never stops changing you need to recalculate your positions all the times, that's why it's too much frustrating for me at least to be an active trader in crypto. however I have always tried to stay in green side of my trades if I buy something at 0.0001 no matter what is the bitcoin price I will only sell any thing above 0.0001 even if it's a few sats profit.

Both are important but at the end of the day if you are in bitcoin profit you can always wait for the price to rise even if you are not in USD profit.

If you are unable to figure whether you are in profit or not in your daily trades then you should stay away from trading before you go bankrupt, simple math and calculations suffice to know, always calculate your orders in satoshi because USD value is constantly changing and you'll end up in negative instead of positive.

The reason for the change is because Altcoins are measured against BTC. And BTC is measured against Dollar.
Here is the thing, if you buy a certain units of a coin for 0.1BTC and then 0.1BTC is $200. You might have some percent increase in the value of the coin, but your BTC value won't increase, that's cus the value of BTC has gone from it was when you bought the coins and vice versa.

For bitcoin against fiat trading both are same.
For bitcoin against another crypto, I will look at satoshi differences to determine whether I am into profits or not.

There is nothing like that as mentioned. With btc it is risky and with USD we don't have any sort of risk. Both are similar only thing that makes the difference is that bitcoin calculation is little complex than the USD. This makes majority of the users calculate everything in terms of USD.

USD ... because I have chosen liquidity as a metric ...


Following that logic .. btc is have much more liquidity than alt coins ... in general btc is the entry/exit point of alt con

usd>btc>altcoin

I personally prefer to use USD to determine how much $$$ I made or lost, but I also check if the currency is still worth the same amount in BTC.

Both are keeping going good.It up to you to choice Bitcoin or USD. If your choice is Bitcoin then you will need to wait for a period that the price of it increase and you will get the profit. If your choice is USD. Then it is easy to know that you are in profit or loss as it may take years to give you the profit like bitcoin . In Bitcoin people think there is a little risk but it is now secured and everyone get the profit.

Actually i am using Blockfolio android apps for this. It help me find out easily i am in profit or loss,and it is USD or BTC, also i can watch that easily. I think its the easiyest way to watch or calculate loss/profit. You can try it dude.

Thats actually your decision. Are you trading BTC against USDT or ALts to increase your BTC stack or are you doing it for Fiat profit? a good advice i heard one of this days is to keep track on both. So you know you are increasing your BTC, and you now if you are getting more profit that to just let your BTC alone and seeing the value growing.

For me I measure based on dollars because I mostly hold for a specific number of days and because I hold in btc, then the value of my 0.01btc is always constant since I don't keep where I get interest on deposit but the relative value on it in USD shows whether I am losing or not that my 0.01btc is no longer 25$ but now 32$ depending on the direction of price.

I think we should calculate profit or loses through dollars as it value is always statics. Satoshi reduce and increase in values in high rapidity. Though all the exchangers platform rate your trading in bitcoin but I don't see it in that way  i see it like when it reach my hand.

Exactly, It depends on the btc/USD conversion. Personally, I don't used USD but my local currency. But USD is also fine with me and I got to used with the conversion and I know when I have profited or not. I just look at the price of bitcoin then I just calculated in my mind how much I got today or should be getting specially if I do day trading. Then I just withdraw from trading platform the earnings and just left enough bitcoin to continue my trading practice.

Choose one of them to become your reference, if you trading btc with alt coin then I suggest you to just used bitcoin, don't get mixed up because sometimes you probably got minus in dollar but you can get positive in btc that is because the price of btc is dropping, it's a beginner confusion, just choose one then you can know you are having profit or not

Your earnings would still depend on the convertion of the amount of btcs you've accumulated. Though for me personally, i don't really mind that because i usually put any earnings i get back to trading. I only withdraw when i need to so i'm not really that much concerned about the exchange rate to fiat yet

If you earn Satoshi it's mean you are earning in bitcoin it is a unit of bitcoin.As we know from Satoshi dollar far better. because there are many numbers of Satoshi is not even equal to 1 Dollar.So i will recommend USD.

It really depends on what you want to do. If you want to keep your trading profits in cryptocurrency for a while before a big pump in btc occurs, you can say that you are in profit if the amount of satoshi you invested have multiplied. If you always cash it out and convert it onto fiat, you can say you are in profit if the amount of dollars you invested have multiplied.

Yes exactly for us being the investors both the USD and BTC are equally important. There is some sort of correlation between the BTC and the USD because both are the symbols of wealth and also that the investors hold BTC for a long time only for the reason so that they get more UDS’s from the sale in the future which also makes a sense.

I like your optimistic approach towards the cryptocurrency but let me remind you that currently the cryptocurrency don’t have the strength to be the only choice for us to make it the only way of payments so, we are basically in need of the USD. If it was not so then the price comparison of the Bitcoin would not be judged by it purchase price with the USD.

It depends.

When you trade, it is with BTC/(other coins) which you measure your profit in BTC since it is the basis. While if you say Bitcoin alone then you ought to measure it with dollar since it is the basis. That's the simple logical explanation and no need to elaborate more. No need to be confused.

I think it actually depends on your choice of currency, anyways mostly at the end of the day you are still converting your coins to USD or your country's currency right?

This is something that depends upon your choice that which one you prefer to choose to compare whether you are in profit or not. Secondly we cannot deny the fact that in the end of a trade we need to convert our profit may be more or less but we need fiat for our routine activities therefore I personally check my profit with the USD.

This is not always true, for example you've closed your altcoin position with 5% profit in BTC, but Bitcoin dropped 10% during that time, than you've actually lost 5.5% of your investments USD value. So, both USD and BTC values of your trade are important. There are actually two methods of trading cryptocurrencies - one is only increasing your BTC value and stacking Bitcoin for long term, and the second is increasing your USD value at the current moment, by selling Bitcoins during peaks, even if it means that you have to close your position on altcoins prematurely. The second method is the most profitable, because you will be getting profit from both altcoin and Bitcoin volatility, but it's very hard to execute on practice and requires big amounts of attention and experience.

I would not say today that the crypto currency market is suffering some kind of disaster. If you follow the rates on the stock exchange, then any altcoin today shows very well the growth of its prices. As for Bitcoin, This is a snot question and I see that today we will see very good indicators and the course of care will be pleasantly surprised by the prices for the crypto currency.

Any gains in BTC is also a gain in USD value keep that in mind. There are just some variance in prices in exchanges since there are different activities in different markets.


If you want to see the marketcap go down, that means every single altcoin needs to go down including bitcoin. Potentially bitcoin can carry the whole crypto market if it continues booming in price even if the other alts trail behind.

you need to look at the value on bitcoin not usd, because if you have 0.01 and you have then 0.02 you made 100% profit, even if the value of bitcoin go down, but this is more true with mining, because you don't acquire bitcoin v ia buying when you mine, if you invest 0.01 with $10, but you gain 0.02 that are worth now $5, you have a loss ther,e but again if the bitcoin increase after that you are not losing anymore

Keep you mind on the BTC/satoshi profit.
You can easily see the price of BTC but not the altcoins. Sometimes they are hard to find to how much value they are or the exchange rate of each altcoin.
Plus, both are changing in price so why not focus on just earning BTC and let the flow of money just go on.
You can look at it after the profit from satoshis.

the total market cap is the sum of a couple of hundred altcoins' market cap. and among these altcoins there are so many that have fake market cap. also almost all of them are pump and dumps.
so when they get dumped hard, their prices fall so (market cap = price * supply) goes down. and the bigger their supply is the bigger the drop will be when their price tanks.

Btw, what is happening when the general total market cap goes down but the bitcoin price goes up? If the bitcoin price goes up that must mean more people are flooding in to buy? But how can the general total marketcap go down then?

I totally agree, although I would assume by mere logic that the main reason to join this world of crypto coins is the the desire acquire bitcoins and set aside fiat money, especially the dollar. So I always consider that I am in profit when at the moment of closing a trade it leaves me with more bitcoins than when I opened it.

OK. But 'crypto wealth' is a broad term, if you don't define which coins you want to bet on in the long run, you'd be stuck with $ valuation to measure the progress (how else would you know whether 1,000 dickckoin and 50 crapcoin is "more crypto wealth" than 7 shitcoin and 0.05 butttoken?). There's nothing wrong with having $ as a reference, just wanted to clarify.


Why? In simple terms (taking all other factors aside) rallying Bitcoin would most likely even enhance the altcoin's uptrend (in USD terms).


Investopedia: Opportunity cost refers to a benefit that a person could have received, but gave up, to take another course of action.

If you bought coin A and doubled your money, but if you had bought coin B instead, you would've tripled it - the difference in gains is your opportunity cost. It's not really a loss though.

You have to look both ways in my case if I bought Bitcoin when the dollar was down and after a week the dollar went up against our  currency eventhough bitcoin price did not move I am on profit ,you have to watch both the price of bitcoin and the price of your local currency it's quite tricky and you need a tool like Preev and the dollar to your local currency so you can calculate your profit and lost.

What exactly do you mean by "opportunity cost"?

This is my scenario, I am after to accumilate as much crypto wealth as possible, as I think it will increase and grow over time while the dollar might end up becoming obsolete.  I guess if I thought a bubble was about to pop I would try to get out for a bit, but then I would exchange to theater, not usd... So in my case I should just forget about usd prices and focus on satochi?

But the price of BTC will incluence the ups and downs of other coins very much then or how does that work? Like if a coin goes up in a straight line, but the next day BTC is up a lot, then you would expect that upward trend in the other coin to decline?

It's true... when in ALTCOINS you NEED to look at everything in Bitcoin/Satoshi price. It could look like your altcoin doubled, but if Bitcoin tripled in the sae amount of time, you actually lost money from opportunity cost.

Whenever I am trading altcoins in exchanges I only look at my value in terms of Bitcoins not really it's equivalent in USD or any other fiat for that matter. I believe that you shouldn't directly convert your profits into fiat whenever you are computing as the value in fiat changes drastically and you will never know how much you really earned. Bitcoins are stable, it has a dollar value, but it is easier to compute there as you do not factor in the prices of bitcoins every time you have to calculate your earnings vs your initial investment. I hope that made sense.

It is up to you. You select a reference point as usd or btc. Then you consider your profit. Some people look at the net usd they have while some others look at the satoshi they gave. You can be in profit side in either one of them or both of them.

Depends what your game is and what you care about.

Most would care more about fiat profits, as those represent purchasing power therefore increase/decrease in your wealth. But if your goal was to hold onto bitcoins no matter what for the next X years, and you trade altcoins to accumulate more bitcoins, then fiat movements are irrelevant to you.

In the scenario you described, despite small $ gain, you made a bad call on DOGE and shouldn't be happy about it.

This belongs more in Trading Discussion.

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Most alts are measured and traded dominantly against BTC.  This even applies to the biggest alts like ETH which have fiat pairs as well.

You'll find that the majority of people trading alts are in it for more BTC, and the majority of people trading BTC are in it for more fiat, especially when the price goes up loads like right now.

So it would be most important to measure it against BTC, because crypto profits are mostly to do with the amount of fiat you would have gained in value compared to the amount you would have gained from just holding Bitcoin.  However, this is flexible and could be different in some cases.

Well you have to choose your reference... every price is in reference of something else. If you value BTC more than USD, then you will be happy to make BTC gains. If you care about USD, then you will be happy if your USD go up... it's all about reference, there's no global value.

If you think BTC is a long term winner, then focus on making more BTC and forget about USD fluctuations.

I am a little confused because I have always looked at the satoshi prices, but sometimes I hear people say that you should look at the dollar value if you are in profit or not. But when you trade at an exchange to BTC all the peaks and vallies are measured in BTC? Should you follow dollar value or satoshi value to know if you are in profit? Or do just have to choose one of them and stick to it? For example if I buy at 0.1 satoshi and now the chart show 0.12 satoshi I think I am in profit? But is that not always the case? I am using cointracking for example to see if I am in profit or not. If I look at BTC value of Doge I am currently in -7% on the coin, but if I switch to dollar I am +0.09%  It is very confusing..

Does it have to do with if you plan to keep your money inside crypto or take it out? If you plan to take it out I guess dollar is more important, but my plan is to stay in crypto for the long term so dollar value is not even important at that point...?

I mean if you buy a coin at 0.1 satoshi and you sell it at 0.2 satochi you have sold in "profit" even if btc would have sunken 90%?