Bitcoin price today follows ETH, Litecoin, TRON
Several of the top 10 cryptocurrencies fell today, sort of all at once. It was as if the top of the market had too much to eat over the weekend and had themselves one bit yawn. But as it has been several times in the past few weeks, the top doesn't always move like the bottom, and Altcoins saw some big gains.
OF NOTE: Much of the information SlashGear provides here – and in other, similar articles – is meant for readers interested in cryptocurrency news. Readers of these articles are largely those that are brand new to this technology and/or market. SlashGear presents the news in a way that's appropriate for the most common stage of knowledge in the market. This will change over time.
Higher Movement
The price of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and the rest are speculative. As it is with any price speculation market, disparate coins seem to correlate, and nonsense movements can happen at any time. All it takes is a whale to make a big move, and the entire market can shift.
Something trackable happened in the past few weeks, with all of the top 10 coins but especially Bitcoin. Every time Bitcoin has big gains, fast, the larger portion of the rest of the coin market falls. Especially those with Bitcoin pairings. The good part about this is that the opposite seems to be true, too.
When Bitcoin takes a bit of a tank, altcoins seem to go up. What's great for those investors that are in Bitcoin, but moved to altcoin pairs, is that each Bitcoin rise seems to have only a temporary effect on altcoins. It's been only a matter of hours before quick losses retrace themselves back to pre-loss levels, and Bitcoin continues to rise.
Volatility
Each of the most major cryptocurrencies in the world had major moves over the past week or two. Especially Ripple, but lesser coins as well – see TRON, too. A mistake a lot of new investors are making in this market is assuming that an upward movement means that the price of any one coin won't come back down, just as quick.
Some users are doing lots of research into the technology behind each project with an associated coin. Their potential mistake is assuming the project itself has everything to do with the price of the coin. Ripple's price was largely influenced by recent announcements about working with big banks, but the price of a coin like Dogecoin has absolutely nothing to do with the tech it represents.
The good news here is that cash can be made – and is being made – even when the price of a coin is difficult to rely on. Switching back and forth between Bitcoin and any number of Bitcoin-paired altcoins can result in a quickly growing bag of coins.
The same can be true of placing a short or long bet on any coin. This can be done on several coin exchanges – none of which I'll be linking to here today – but beware. As quickly as an investment can disappear with a standard coin hold, a long or short bet can liquidate one's cash even quicker.
NOTE: None of the above content should be considered investment advice. Neither SlashGear nor the author assume any responsibility for what you do before, during, or after reading this article.