When you buy alt coins, you're buying a bet. The bet is: this alt will rise relative to the market. What most alt holders don't honestly measure: is "the market" here USDT, or is it BTC?
The answer makes a world of difference.
The number many would rather not see
In our BTC-Pair Quick Insight Report we showed: 92 % of all actively trading Binance BTC-pairs are bear markets over 8 years. When you measure alts against BTC, they bleed structurally.
This time we asked the question the other way around: what happens in USD terms when you average Buy & Hold across every possible entry point?
The picture is also sobering. In the top-50 USDT universe (50 pairs after pre-flight substitution, BTC excluded):
- 68 % bear profile: 34 of 50 pairs have a negative Avg-B&H CAGR. Regardless of when you would have entered — the median was a loss.
- Median Avg-B&H CAGR across all 50: −14.1 %.
- Mean Avg-B&H CAGR: −10.7 %.
That's the hard floor every alt strategy has to prove itself against.
Asking a different question
Classic RSI/SMA on an alt asks: "When is this alt strong?" The answer comes from the alt itself — the indicator measures the alt's closes.
A different question is: "When is crypto as an asset class strong?" That answer doesn't come from a single alt, it comes from the bellwether — Bitcoin itself.
btc_signal_rsi_sma does exactly that. It computes RSI(14) and SMA(14) on the weekly candles of BTCUSDT. When they cross, it goes long the alt. When they cross back, out of the alt — regardless of what the alt itself is doing.
The result
On the 50-pair universe:
- Mean CAGR: +35.0 % — versus an Avg-B&H mean of −10.7 %. Difference: +45.8 percentage points.
- Beats Avg B&H: 44 of 50 pairs (88 %).
- Median drawdown −54.9 %, versus −68.1 % for classic RSI/SMA on the alts themselves.
- Median win rate 50 % vs 36 % for classic RSI/SMA — the BTC filter eliminates most alt-specific whipsaws.
But the more interesting number is the one when you split by profile.
Where the edge actually comes from
| Profile (by Avg B&H) | Count | Strategy beats B&H | Avg Δ vs B&H |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bull (>+10 %) | 11 | 6 / 11 (55 %) | −4.1 pp |
| Sideways (0–10 %) | 5 | 5 / 5 (100 %) | +41.3 pp |
| Bear (<0 %) | 34 | 33 / 34 (97 %) | +62.6 pp |
On 38 of 39 non-bull pairs the strategy beats Buy & Hold — exactly where passive holding hurts most. The edge is systematic and asymmetric: small losses in bull phases, large gains in the long bleed tail.
What else is in the report
- A mid-cap with 5.5 years of history and a negative Avg B&H — and a strategy CAGR of +164 % p.a. across 39 trades. Δ +186 percentage points. Name in the report.
- Two younger coins (2.1 and 2.7 years of history) flipping more than +120 pp against B&H on just 17 and 21 trades — and why those small samples still warrant cautious interpretation.
- The mega-outlier where the strategy loses 96 percentage points against B&H — and why this single pair (with its own BTC-decoupled story) was statistically unavoidable.
- Comparison btc_signal_rsi_sma vs classic RSI/SMA on the same universe: head-to-head 76 % of pairs to btc_signal — and why the BTC filter is a different risk premium than the alt-specific indicator.
- Full 50-pair asset table sorted by Δ vs Avg B&H, with Excel attachment incl. hybrid allocator.
The uncomfortable conclusion
Anyone trading top-50 alts against USD has, at the median across all entry points, captured a loss. Most don't notice because they only look at their favourite coins, not the median performance of the universe over time.
A simple BTC-triggered RSI/SMA strategy flips that into the green — not because it's smart, but because it asks a more fundamental question: "Does the market want to be long at all?"
If Bitcoin isn't trending, the market doesn't want to be long. Period. The alt holder trading without a BTC filter is always close — and that's exactly where the long bleed phases happen, the ones that drag every Avg-B&H value into the negative.
The full Quick Insight Report with all 38 pairs, detailed profile analysis, strategy-vs-strategy comparison, top/bottom performer tables, and Excel attachment incl. hybrid allocator is available at:
→ tradingstrategies.work/reports/btc-signal-rsi-sma-1w-crypto-top50-quick-v1
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