So true. Markets can have a very short term view as participants chase the quick buck. Lot of that going on in the crypto space at the moment and a LOT of totally uninformed speculators who think they can just read a chart and ignore the driving fundamentals (it does my head in!).
Segwit will be GREAT.....until it isn't. Whether it's the miners conspiring to make an unverified transaction, failure of the Lightning Network or failure to scale properly, the realisation will come at some point and that realisation may even be the sort of black swan to cause a Mt Gox type market event.
But, lets hope for the best and plan for the worst. There is no perfect solution so the game is more about lesser evils and identifying and mitigating their risks than anything else.
You said it. I didn't used to feel uncomfortable holding Bitcoin as the denominator for all my trades, but I'm diversifying more these days.
It's hard not to when it is basically THE crypto used in all the alt coin trading pairs. That might change when SegWit2x forks, but we will need new trading pair options that don't involve BTC soon.
I wonder what that will end up being, Bitcoin cash or Eth I guess.
Maybe. In the long run I'd love to see BTS or EOS get the gig, not just because of performance but they both promise a lot of relevant features.
Short term I think Tether USDT might get the gig. Polo and Bittrex already use it extensively so if BTC gets messy it might not be a big shift to list everything in USDT until one of the Bitcoins reasserts dominance.
I'd be pretty surprised if we saw a big move into Tether. I admittedly know little about tether, but how do they prove that each of their units is backed by $1 that can't be stolen by an ansider?
I'm not suggesting it so much as a big move into Tether, but more that it is a USD peg that can be used as an intermediary in the absence of a clear "king crypto" - which we might have if the SegWit2x fork splits the Bitcoin market cap into 2 halves. A lot of people still look at USD value of cryptos so using USDT would be reflective of that.
If you look at Poloniex, for example. Beyond the BTC trading pairs you have 8 x XMR pairs, 9 x ETH pairs and 12 x USDT pairs....so does that suggest USDT would be next in line if BTC has problems? I think maybe.
Interesting. I don't trade at Poloniex, and my exchanges have a lot fewer Tether pairs
Thanks for the info.