I am sure many will be wondering or perhaps having the same motion as mine that why is it that whenever the price of bitcoin falls, other altcoins follow suit by falling. Even when these altcoins have different developers and it's different uses.
However, altcoins (which are coins other than bitcoin) normally follows the price movement of bitcoin, and as such, when bitcoin falls, these coins tend to lose more of their value, but that's not all, there may be also other reasons behind that fall and that's the main reason for me writing this article, to elaborate more on what correlation bitcoin has to other altcoins, which I will be sharing with you below.
1. Trading Pair:
With this I mean, since bitcoin plays an important role in all exchanges, been the first cryptocurrency, and a major trading pair, which other cryptos(altcoins) are been paired with, followed by the likes of Ethereum and USDT. When its value falls, there is a high tendency that the others will follow suit too, as the values of most of these altcoins rely on the current price of bitcoin.
For example:
XRP/BTC
XRP/BTC (which implies that the price of the XRP somehow rely on the price of bitcoin)
And secondly, when a new coin is listed on an exchange, that coin is either paired with Bitcoin, Ethereum, or USDT, which are major trading pairs. So when its value falls, there is a great probability the new coin will fall too.
2. Investors and traders of the crypto market:
With this, I mean that the activities of traders when the price of bitcoin rise and falls also affect other coins too. And here is how it works. When the price of bitcoin goes up, the price of altcoins are forced to go down, as the liquidity of those altcoins are been transferred to bitcoin, as traders sell their altcoins just to buy more bitcoins as the price climbs high in other to make more profit, and when the price falls, the traders sells his coin for a stable coin like USDT, BUSD, and USDC, since he knows that as the price of bitcoin falls, also will other altcoins do, causing a less in demand for those altcoins and drop in price.
3. The use of fundamentals:
By this I mean, since most coins rely on the price movement of bitcoin, even when they have their different developers, projects, and use cases. If bitcoin falls, they tend to lose value, but if bitcoin rises, they also tend to add a little value positively.
4. Bitcoin Dominance:
With this I mean, how much percentage bitcoin has of the total cryptocurrency market cap. Because bitcoin been the first cryptocurrency and a major coin has the highest percentage of more than 50% in the market cap. And this means that when the value of bitcoin dominance is rising or huge, it means that the buying power is on the side of bitcoin compared to altcoins, which usually causes a fall in the price of altcoins. But if the Bitcoin dominance is going down, it means that the buying power is on the side of altcoins, making their prices pump.
So In conclusion, these are how the price of bitcoin and other altcoins correlate. Hence, whenever the price of bitcoin is affected, there is a high probability altcoin will also be affected.
So thank you so much for finding out time to read this researched article of mine.
I remain your humbled junior member.
Thanks