When I first entered the trading world, I thought that all currencies could only be bought with dollars. I didn't know there was something called trading pairs, nor the difference between BTC/USDT and ETH/BTC, for example. After a period of learning and experimenting, I began to understand that choosing the right trading pair has a significant impact on the trade. Sometimes the currency itself is good, but the pair you are trading in may not have enough liquidity or may behave strangely.

One of the things I learned is that some pairs are more stable and easier to predict their movement, like the pairs against USDT, because they are tied to the dollar and their price is clear. However, pairs against currencies like BTC or ETH have more complex movements, because you’re tracking two currencies at the same time, not just one.

I started always asking myself before any trade: What pair will give me the best price and execution? Do I need to convert my profits back to dollars or invest them in another asset? Many times I use pairs against BNB or BTC because I don’t want to go back to cash, but I want to switch between projects. I learned that selecting the pair depends on my goal for the trade and on the overall market condition.

Choosing the pair has become part of my decision; I no longer trade just because I saw a currency rising, I have to see which currency I’m going to trade it against, and how this pair has moved over the past few days. I learned to monitor the volume, liquidity, and spread before I open the trade. This is a big difference from the old days when I would just press buy and that was it.