#TradingPairs101

"And why can't I just buy the coin I want?"

This is a question I asked myself more than once at the beginning of my journey. It seemed that there was a coin — I wanted to buy it, that's all. But no 😅

It turns out, in the world of crypto, you always buy a coin in exchange for another — this is the trading pair.

🧩 What is a trading pair really?

It's like a "bridge" between two assets. For example:

• SOL/USDT — I buy SOL by spending USDT.

• ETH/BTC — I buy ETH for Bitcoin or sell ETH to receive BTC.

But from this point on, it gets more interesting.

💡 Why this matters:

• I started noticing that the price of the same coin is different in different pairs.

For example, ETH may be "rising" against USDT but "falling" in the pair with BTC. This means that what really matters is what you hold your capital in.

• Sometimes I needed to first exchange USDT for BTC to buy some lesser-known coin. So — an extra move, an extra fee, and also the risk of losing out on BTC's price fluctuations.

🤔 What I want to explore next:

• How to effectively plan trades when a non-obvious pair is needed?

• How to track which pair is more advantageous to enter a position in?

• And most importantly: how does the trading pair affect my PnL?

📌 Write to me if you have your own approach to choosing pairs — it's always interesting to learn from practitioners.