Topic: Is having USDT the most efficient way to buy altcoins during dips? (Read 332 times)

1. Tether can collapse.

2. If you are bullish on the long term of btc, then a fait position is not good as you risk losing your btc position.

3. There is far more volume on btc pairs instead of usdt pairs so if you are a large trader you will not be able to fill your orders with usdt.

4. Most alts dont even trade against usdt.

5. You cannot use margin on usdt pairs at most exchanges.

This is somewhat accurate, but it's more complicated than that. It's a free-floating asset that is openly traded on the markets. It's pegged to the dollar as long as Tether redeems them as such. Currently they are unable to do so. Bad news (like regulatory actions) related to Tether or Bitfinex could send the price of USDT crashing, since people might lose faith that they can be redeemed for dollars in the future.

I've also seen the market value of USDT go well above $1, sometimes 10-20% higher. This happens when the altcoin market is really hot, and people are using USDT to transfer between exchanges to buy different coins more than to hedge USD value.

I buy alts with BTC simple! whenever BTC goes up alts start dipping in value(in terms of BTC) and buy them. when BTC starts going down i sell alts and increase my bitcoin holding.

Lol, you should first read about usdt. it's value cannot go higher than 1 us dollar, it will always be pegged to a dollar.

USDT is one of the altcoins that are going to do very well in 2018 . I have been following it price since the beginning and I think this coin or token is going to do well in future and it is a great potential layed. But this is just a personal opinion and you should not invest based on what other saying about this.

Okay so the only reason to convert your btc to usdt whether you have btc or just sold the altcoin for btc is if.


1.  You believe btc and altcoins will drop in value until you want to buy another coin

2.  You want to make sure you convert btc in usdt so you park the usdt value so when you want to buy altcoins, then you are unaffected by the btc price fluctuations right?




But if you think btc price go up till the moment you going to buy an altcoin or if you are just holding, then thats the only reason that you should not convert to usdt right?  Thus if you know you will buy altcoin soon but feel btc price will go up, then dont sell it for usdt.  But if you feel it will go down or you dont want to get affected by btc prices, then convert it to usdt?  Also someone says usdt takes more processing time.  Can someone explain this?  I mean when you sell an altcoin for btc... when you sell the btc for usdt... isn't that very quick just like selling altcoin for btc?  And when you are ready to buy altcoin, you buy btc with usdt and then immediately buy altcoin with it. Shouldnt this be very quick or there is something im missing here.  I assume the only negative thing about this would be paying 0.25 percent each time on bittrex so you are paying a total of 0.50 percent to park its value?

You are wrong, everytime that i have some kind of information about that an altcoin is going to decrease or if just bitcoin is going to do so, i sell all my bitcoins or that altcoin for USDT.

That is the best thing that you can do.


And once that the altcoin goes down, just buy that one using USDT, by this way you are going to get more bitcoins or whatever you bought.

Simple math, nothing more than that.

Yes is the answer to your question. USD and USDT are almost same why because the price of the 1 USDT is equivalent to 1 USD price.

And here if the price is dropped then your strategy will work out, but if it increased to $20k, then you feel why you converted it into USDT.

Thats correct.  Im not talking about having usdt as an investment.  Because well its always around 1 dollar or so.  I meant about having usdt on hand to buy altcoins during dips.  Or buying btc during dips but it was more so altcoins than bitcoins but it certainly applies to btc as well.  Thus on coinbase/gemini, even though i never used it, i know when you sell btc, you get usd balance.  Thus when you want to buy, you buy with your usd balance.  But they don't have many of those altcoins.


So if you want to trade altcoins on bittrex, well you need btc.  But some people don't want to hold btc.  Or if they do, sometimes they want to convert it to usdt because that way when they want to buy an altcoin when altcoin dips and btc does not... let say btc stays around same price... then you would get more altcoins for your money because you would buy the btc with the usdt that you already got when you sold your btc... then immediately buy the altcoin.  Of course this works to get more altcoin if btc either stays the same price or goes lower after you sold it for usdt... and the altcoin has to lower in price.


What the person mentioned about the buy 1 btc at 15k and sell it for altcoin and then altcoin doubles and you have 2btc... then you sell it for 30k usd.  Then wait till btc drops to 10k and now you use the 30k usdt to buy 3 btc, that is pretty much what im talking about as well.  And i like to know is usdt used the same was as usd as this applies to btc, eth and also ALTCOINS.  It seems that people who do this with btc, eth seem to only do this on sites that use usd only like coinbase/gdax?  Any reason why not bittrex?  But with those other altcoins, obviously you can only do this on exchanges like bittrex.

Let me see if I can paint the picture clearly to clarify for others.

He's not suggesting USDT as an investment, but rather a way to park your funds. Let's look at an example using USD.

I have $15,000 USD and buy 1 BTC @ $15,000 and immediately invest it in ALT1 @ .0001 BTC (10K shares). ALT1 rises to .0002 BTC = 100% increase, great! I take those 10K shares and convert back to BTC, now worth 2 BTC (10K x .0002). I then convert those 2 BTC back into USD and now have $30K USD. Soon after, the coin markets drop considerably and BTC is now valued at $10,000. I can now take my $30,000 USD (unchanged in value) and buy 3 BTC.

So instead of holding 2 BTC and having it drop with the market to ~1.3 BTC, I now have 3 BTC.

The question is can USDT be used the same way as USD in this scenario and roughly with the same result??

If not, why?

I try to avoid trading against USDT as well as I don't trust them + they have bad media reviews. It is much better for me to send bitcoin to bitstamp,kraken or other btc/usd exchange when I want to change into fiat. Or sometimes use hedging on bitmex.

I prefer and use  Bitcoin and nowdays Ethereum as well sometimes to buy Altcoins. USDT personally I found it too problematic for me to buy USDT. I found the other two coins BTC and ETH much more hassle free to buy. Also I don't like USDT so kind of try to avoid it.

I will not put big money in usdt no matter how badly I want to trade or buy altcoin. Bitcoin is a sure bet that you will have it when you need to buy or trade altcoin. Yes sometimes their might be delay in transfering bitcoin but you have several means of accelerating your transaction or better still having an emmergency bitcoin onyour trusted exchange!

when altcoins drop (get dumped hard) they are losing their value. and if you want to buy them in their dips you can use form of currency to buy them. this form of currency can be USD, EUR, ... or BTC. and since most people trade in bitcoin markets to increase their BTC wealth, those markets are mostly popular and have higher volumes. which makes it the most efficient way to buy altcoins with bitcoin.

on the other hand USDT is a centralized altcoin which also happens to shady and risky. it is very hard to trust such a system that has nothing guaranteed and promises absolutely nothing to those who hold it. that brings in a huge risk for you to even use it for a short amount of time. although it may seem convenient at times.

I'll give this one more try, but I get the impression you're waiting for someone to confirm your bias (which I think is incorrect).


Honestly, it doesn't. You should stop looking at altcoins in dollar value. It's not how the markets trade. In a bull market, the only thing that matters is whether an altcoin is outperforming BTC. If you sit around in USDT waiting for the low on an altcoin, it probably means you just missed a massive BTC move. You could then buy BTC and buy the altcoin, but it would have made a lot more sense to hold BTC and then trade for altcoins once the market turns.

Worrying about the dollar value of altcoins is a great way to get shaken out of the market too. Panic selling is much more intense in altcoin markets than BTC (because liquidity is so bad), and you need to have bids on the BTC pair in order to exploit it. Pull up a midcap altcoin/USD chart on Tradingview (they calculate the USD value based on the BTC chart). It looks like shit compared to the alcoin/BTC chart, doesn't it? Wicks and whipsaws every which way. That's because they are all correlated to BTC. You should be trading them as such. Otherwise you're probably just losing bitcoins left and right (and quite possibly USD as well).

If you can wrap your head around it, it makes a lot more sense to hedge short BTC to deal with BTCUSD downside risk, and simply trade the alt/BTC markets as they are. It only makes sense to hold USDT in a crash scenario (in which case, screw USDT, I want real USD on a licensed exchange or in my bank account).

Well i haven't gotten a response on this that really answers the question.  Thats the issue here.

Didn't seem like you got the relevant responses here. I have the same question. You ever get to the bottom of this? What'd you conclude? USDT a good way to park funds amidst dramatic drops?

I don't know why people keep mentioning altcoins don't have liquid USDT markets.  Im well aware of this!


I mean say you want to buy an altcoin that is traded against btc and its around 2 dollars at the moment.  BTC is around 10000 dollars.  You want to buy 1000 shares of the altcoin at 1 dollar.  Thus spend 1000 usd.  You have 0.10 btc now so thats 1000 dollars.  If you buy altcoin now, you only get 500 at the moment.  So now you are waiting for altcoin to drop to 1 dollar.  Lets also say you dont think btc will go up that much from now on until you buy that altcoin.  You think it will either stay same price or even drop in price.  If thats the case, then wouldn't it make sense to immediately sell the btc for usdt right now so you get around 1000 usd at the moment?  That way when btc drops and the altcoin drops... lets say it drops to 1.50... you decide to just buy the altcoin now.  You then buy btc with the usdt and then immediately sell the btc for the altcoin.  Now you might get around 700 or so of it.  Does that make sense or not?

Most altcoins are priced in BTC. There are some very liquid markets like ETH where the fiat charts are important, but generally "buying the dip" on altcoins entails waiting in BTC, much like "buying the dip" on BTC means waiting in USD.


It depends. With the recent dip, altcoins were looking so strong that I only hedged my BTC with a short and otherwise just held everything in my portfolio. I'm surprised everything didn't crash together.

In this case, I bought back BTC, but none of my altcoin bids got filled. No panic. So, waiting on some new entries.


No, most altcoins don't have liquid USDT markets. I definitely prefer to trade alt/BTC markets, and it's obviously simpler and cheaper not to introduce another market in the middle (USDT).

How is the same if you are going to buy the same amount?  Example say you want to buy 1000 shares of a coin at 1 dollar.  The price of btc is say 10000 usd.  Say the price of the altcoin is 2 dollar.  You want to wait for the coin to hit 1 dollar.  Now let say you have 0.10 btc at the moment which is 1000 usd.  If you buy the altcoin now, you could only buy 500 of them since its 2 dollars.


Now say you wait... btc goes up to 13k.  But now altcoin goes to 5 dollars.  Well that 0.10 btc you have... is worth 1300 usd.  But now you could only buy 1300/5 = 260 shares of the altcoin only.


Or let say btc stays at around 10k.  Now if altcoin goes to 3 dollars, you could only buy 333 shares of that altcoin.  Or say btc goes to 8k and btc stays at 2 dollars... you could only get 400 shares of the altcoin.  But say you were to sell the btc for usd when btc is 10000... you have 1000 usdt.  Now if the altcoin goes to 3 dollars... you would have to sell the usdt to btc and then buy the altcoin and you get around 330 or so.  But the thing is if you don't want to face any btc fluctuations, thus isn't converting it to usdt the best thing to do? 


So basically those of you who are waiting to buy altcoins... how do you make sure you have the money to buy the altcoin immediately when it dips to a price that you want to buy?  Always keep btc on hand in your exchange account?  However is this btc the one you are holding or basically using it to buy altcoins regardless if the btc price drops?


I assume those that want to buy altcoins almost never keep the amount of btc in their bitcoin wallets right if they are going to buy altcoins soon?  The reason mainly because it takes so long for btc transfer to take so better have the amount of btc you want to trade on the exchange?  Thus imagine you want to buy an altcoin but then when you send it to bittrex.. it takes a while and then the coin goes up too much.   I ask this because i have had btc in my wallet and tried to send it to bittrex to buy a coin when the price is low but it took way too long and then the coin went up to a price that was so high... where i dont want to buy it anymore because i could not buy much of that coin anymore.

i dont believe it makes a difference, just longer process using USDT