It's not so much a comparison to FIAT or to BTC. It's more like a recognition of the fact that most cryptos are denominated in BTC, like e.g. the US stock market is denominated in USD, and e.g. Japan's stock market - I'm taking a wild guess here - probably isn't denominated in USD.
[ copy pasta bullshit ]
It would be awesome if there were an exchange for ION/USD available to the Ionomy community

Why are you copying some random article that has fuck all to do with ION? Still haven't figured out how to quote in context or stay on topic?
Tell your team to allow USD trading on ionomy.com... should be easy for those geniuses.