This year has been pretty wild for the market, leaning towards the bulls. It's tough to manipulate the bitcoin market, and honestly, bitcoin has outperformed with both technical and fundamental analysis this year. A buddy of mine mentioned he made profits trading altcoins (not just holding) this year.
This got me thinking, who actually made money trading altcoins instead of bitcoin this year?
I've been looking into the altcoin market and I've spotted some manipulations I didn't see coming. You'll find a coin that can suddenly skyrocket 3 to 5 times in just 45 minutes to an hour, then drop back down 3 to 4 times within an hour. I really don't think that's a market worth getting into.
Well, trading cryptocurrency comes with its unique risks which are volatilities and unpredictable market, so for that one can not tell which coin will give them profits in a long or short position, so your friend could have been lucky to have the coin he was trading at that time pumped for him make such profits as claimed.
As a trader, I made a lot of profits from trading Bitcoin and lost all the profits plus my capital to altcoins, specifically memecion, which got dumped by the team and forced me into liquidation, something that I can never see in Bitcoin.
My answer to that question is Bitcoin.
What do you expect from coin projects that don't have a user case or even a blueprint, everything about those coins is based on speculations and hype so, the only activities will be manipulations of the market, just to favor the developers a d when it's time, they're pull an exit scheme on investors.
I'm not an altcoin trader, but I invested in a few altcoins so far. Even though bitcoin is the best investment, I never ignore the opportunity that altcoins present to increase my returns during a bull cycle. Good fundamentals in bitcoin also helped altcoins to grow several fold, of course hence I took advantage of opportunities and earned returns.
To be honest, I managed to get returns from several altcoins so far even though I actually sold them at certain prices gradually. I do it because I believe altcoins can also give me returns, so not only bitcoin can give us returns.
Here is my take
1. Trading Bitcoin; Much safer but less volatile (meaning less potential percentage gains over sometime), require patience sometimes.
2. Trading altcoins, especially brand-new coins or meme coins: very risky but very volatile (You could easily make huge gains or huge loses!)
Earlier this year, I traded a few meme coins on Solana and made about 9x to 10x within a couple of weeks. But the risk was also very high, I was so lucky to exit early enough before the dumps or rug pulls.
Fundamentally better, it's true but Bitcoin market is small and still easily manipulated than traditional markets.
It's possible in a bull run, and if your friend traded with spot, not with margin or futures. If your friend traded with Margin or futures, I am very doubtful that your friend could manage to avoid liquidations with many big corrections in altcoins in 2024.
If he could, congratulate to him, but gaining profit with altcoins in bull market, altcoin season is easy. The harder thing is to secure your profit and initial capital when a bear market starts and lasts for several months.
Altcoins are more vulnerable with corrections and bear market than Bitcoin.
the coin that did this usually are low volume coin with small mcap, no way people will manipulate big FDV coin like SOL, ETH or XRP, the growth so far has been pretty organic.
also if you see some alts doing 4x and dumps 80% the next minute it's probably some random pump and dump group doing their stunt.
but if you just stick with the big mcap alts in general you won't see such manipulation, you see even XRP after doing 4x still floats around that price mark, despite retracement, still pretty strong on the higher side of the price.
In principle, of course, you're absolutely right. However, it should be added that such pump and dumps are only possible for very small coins with a very small market cap. As soon as a coin has reached the top 400 on Coinmarketcap, the daily trading volume is usually so high that even a few thousand dollars invested cannot move the price significantly - and then only in the very short term.
@OP
I wouldn't trade promising altcoins either, but concentrate on the big fish.
Maybe it depends on the trader, because some are more comfortable with bitcoin and others with cryptocurrency. Now, if it's just for my opinion, if you are going to do trading activity in futures trade, it's better to do it in Bitcoin because in altcoins the risk is a bit high. But if you are more comfortable with altcoins, that's still your choice.
Now if you are going to do trading in altcoins, it's better to do it in spot trading, even though bitcoin is fine in my opinion.
Because this is what I do while I save and hold other crypto assets.
Trading have different strategies. If you get the strategy for altcoins, it can be good to go for it. It requires low amount off money. Example is if you use $5000 to trade bitcoin, you can use $500 or less to trade altcoins. Altcoins are more volatile can give higher PnL which is the reason for reducing the trading fund. If the trading fund is reduced, the money that will be deducted as trading fee will be lower. But generally altcoins are very risky but bitcoin trading can be very risky also especially if you have low amount of money and go for high leverage.
Since this bull season, I have traded Bitcoin a few times compared to how many times I have traded some altcoins, there on altcoins I discovered to have so much volatility and made profit from it and lastly I almost blow my account with that same token, then I had to change to another coin which also gave me so much profit. So, this year, I made so much profit from holding Bitcoin but in trading, I made more profit from altcoins compared to Bitcoin.
Here is my take, if you have huge funds and looking to trade and make profits without been in a position of hurry, more like having an investive mindset, i think it will be better you opt to trade bitcoin, where you will be safe without having the fears of volatility causing you too loose too much of your funds in situations where you get hit by volatility strongly, but then if you have got some small capital you are willing to relinquish, then you can try out the altcoins especially the new lunched that has got so much volatility and if you stay on your chart long enough, you will be able to probably double your funds or still loose them and that was why i had to say if you have funds you are willing to relinquish you can try the altcoins out but then there are some other altcoins with some arguable stands of stability but not as much as bitcoin so Bitcoin still remains prime amongst them all.
That is good if that friend of yours, made more money in trading than holding. But it's not about how much and who's right. If that works for him, that's good that he's able to find out how to make more money on this market and the others like the majority in the forum are holders. And, that's also good for us that we know how to make more money with the strategy that we've used to do and that's no other holding. There is more pressure to trading altcoins than holding. With that reason, they can eventually lose more money too instead of making more.
Your friend explanation of his altcoin trading strategy of never holding explains the whole altcoin shenanigans, altcoin market is one market someone not ready to lose his money should never go into, it is easily manipulated from developers buying the presale coin cheap and dumping later to genuine investors to airdrops giving out peanuts so that people can buy more or be forced to hodl on to.
There are mid cap Altcoins like Sui, XRP and Solana that have made significant gains this year and some other L2 coins too, also there was a memecoin period where people made some gains in those memecoins but most of them ran to rugs.
One future trading strategy I used most this year was shorting newly listed bitcoin minutes after their lunch most especially those which had airdroppers claiming same day with listing day, this strategy works almost 75% of them time.
I did have a stash that I use to swing trade Solana but I only trade during crypto bull markets. Altcoins can go up higher than Bitcoin during pumps so why not? But the altcoin has to be one of the most trustworthy altcoins. I would never even consider touching shitcoins or any low market cap coins. I always take profits in BTC.
but I would not say that I made more profit trading altcoins than I earned with Bitcoin because most of my stash is in the Bitcoin hodl pile.
Me on altcoin no doubt. Got a bag of bitcoin but when compared to some of my gains I received from multiplier on altcoin, that not even a competition. I love bitcoin and investing on it, but I guess some alts are just more profitable in my opinion. Well that of course on how you pick your altcoin to trade with, not all can win in market where some alts are left behind and become dust.
I think you'd get undoubted answer to this if you stumble on what market has the highest trading volume because the crowd is usually following the trends which could be visioned as most favourable.
Other means, the scale of bitcoin users has also dominated the crypto markets in both trading and investment.
Investing in the crypto markets has been more easier than trading due to the technicality value of its volatility involved for traders to stay fit to the market.
So anyone ranging to trade on the AltCoins is mindedly equip to bear it risks as such as gambling with the potential risks of loosing it all. Congratulations to your friend who made it on AltCoin trading but he's not being carried away to stand on same ground other times because AltCoin volatility is highily unpredictable worse than bitcoin.
No one can absolutely deny the fact that whenever an altcoin wants to pump they so much than bitcoin this is simply because this altcoins are very volatile and this there volatility is what drives them up and down in few minutes. Bitcoin has nearly two trillion market cap compare to the billion some of these altcoins have, so the movement definitely wouldnt be same, same also with the drop too.
Altcoins will give better returns but the question is which altcoin is actually going to pump from the thousands flying around, many of these Altcoins are simply pump and dump coins that can easily make you lots of money and make you lose everything if it is not invested in well.
For me I will say treat all altcoins as pure gamble and only use bitcoin as an investment assets this way you can know what to put so and so money into
The question is posed in a strange way, as if you are questioning that you can make money trading altcoins. We should not forget that ETH is also an altcoin, which is just as difficult to manipulate as Bitcoin.
Trading altcoins has high risks, but also brings great profits. But by following risk management, you can reduce your risks.
The higher the price volatility, the greater the opportunity for profits generated, as well as the risks involved. Trading altcoins is an option for every trader, including me, but if we trade altcoins then don't set super high profits. As long as you get a profit of 10%, then just take it first and reset the trade at the right time.
I trade BNB, ETH and LTC, it is profitable for me even if only a little. Not much capital is an obstacle for every trader, but small capital is an opportunity to learn more. Some experienced traders will advise not to be greedy, including that the profit percentage set should not be too high.
I don't think this really matters if you are actively trading. Like, for sure if you are trading regularly, you will just keep scanning different pairs especially if the current chart of Bitcoin is you don't feel like trading so for sure you will find other good pairs with good trading volume and probably a good opportunity to enter a trade.