Altcoins for Fiat Instead of Bitcoin

Published on 08 December 2017 by Cryptovest Staff

Although altcoins are booming in terms of fiat, the price in Bitcoin for many projects is permanently depressed. Since most altcoins are paired with BTC, whales and other buyers have a disproportionate effect on the price. At the same time, coins like MonaCoin, traded directly against fiat, are having their independent bull runs and a separate market sentiment, allowing them to draw investors which are not quite so fond of Bitcoin.

"This is just no way in hell working anymore. Will big money ever really dare to invest in things like Walton, Vechain etc. When a BTC rally absolutely destroys EVERYTHING else? A project can release fantastic news, and the price goes up. Bitcoin rises and with no negative news whatsoever an alt can drop 50%?" wrote Reddit poster Regula96.

At the moment, there are very few alternative price discovery mechanisms for altcoins against fiat. LiteBit.Eu is one of those services, although it does not allow for trading, just offering an exchange rate. But the US and Europe have very few direct channels of fiat entering altcoins.

For altcoins, the inflow of direct cash from Korea and Japan have proven beneficial. Additional liquidity separate from Bitcoin may be available through decentralized services and innovative platforms, but this would require going through another dedicated token, such as the Binance coin. Projects such as Bancor and QASH offer a way of determining the value of digital assets beyond their connection to Bitcoin.

Recently, ICOs have started adding a cash-in option, to invite more users who do not want to go through Bitcoin or Ethereum. Such a move de-couples a part of cryptocurrencies from the leading coins, which also appreciate for their usage as settlement for other assets.

But projects aiming for the next technological boom may not want to be tied up to Bitcoin that way, and find avenues to an independent price mechanism.

In the last Bitcoin jump toward $20,000, altcoins quickly abandoned their all-time highs, sinking down as much as 20%.