This article explains a ranking lens. Its craft readings are practitioner observations, labeled as such, not tested claims. Nothing here is investment advice. Decisions are yours.
Relative strength against BTC is an asset's price divided by BTC's: a ratio chart asking the only question that separates leadership from tide, is this thing outperforming the market factor itself? A coin can rise 30% in dollars and fall against BTC, and the second reading is the one that grades the asset rather than the regime.
The denominator decision
What a depeg does is a reminder that every price is a ratio, and the denominator frames the question. Dollar terms ask: did wealth grow? BTC terms ask: did this asset earn anything beyond its exposure to the tide, the same question the regression framework formalizes in the alpha-beta piece, answered with a chart instead of a slope. In a market where one factor dominates, the BTC-denominated chart is the deflated view: it subtracts the market from the asset and shows what remains. Bull markets make every USD chart beautiful; the alt/BTC chart is where you find out which beauty was borrowed.
The four readings
Practitioners run RS in four modes. Ranking: sort a universe by strength versus BTC over a window and attention flows to the top decile, the cross-sectional construction that the momentum evidence rests on. Confirmation: a USD breakout accompanied by an RS breakout means the asset leads the market, not merely rides it, while a USD breakout on flat RS is the tide wearing a costume. Early warning: RS rolling over while the USD chart still rises is the leadership fading before price admits it, the single-asset version of the breadth divergence in the breadth explainer. And regime aggregation: the share of the board with rising RS versus BTC is exactly how alt season gets measured, and its collapse is the grind that BTC dominance rotation describes. Honesty about the evidence tier: the ranking mode inherits the academic momentum literature's support; the chart-reading modes are craft, coherent and widely used, but not statistics.
Reading it from this board today
Plainly: the monitor methodology makes the momentum columns USD-denominated, and the board does not yet publish a dedicated RS-vs-BTC column. The crude read is still one subtraction away: BTC sits on the board with its own 30-day and 90-day readings, and any asset's momentum minus BTC's over the same window is its relative performance, coarse but honest. An explicit ratio column is a natural candidate for the board's evolution precisely because it is computable from prices already published, and the case against secret sauce decides how it would ship: formula first, the way every column does.
The traps
Three, briefly. Denominator regime: in a hard risk-off, an asset can win the RS contest by falling slower than BTC, which makes it the strongest corpse in the morgue; RS readings need the absolute trend state alongside, and that is what the monitor's moving-average columns anchor. Thin-name distortion: a ratio of a thin price to a thick one inherits the thin one's noise and manipulability, both of which scale with how little dollar volume the thin name trades. And window sensitivity: leadership over 30 days and over 90 can disagree, so any RS claim without its window is an opinion in a lab coat. The lens itself survives all three caveats, because the question it asks is the right one: against the only denominator this market respects, who is actually strong? Decisions are yours.