I understand that since altcoins are paired with BTC for trading, the price is based off bitcoin's.
However, even if an altcoin is doing well, it can tank (in terms of sats) when bitcoin's price corrects.
Will we ever see a market that isn't so heavily dependent on bitcoin? Is this possible for the future?
The growth of coins depends on the increased demand of users. If users begin to actively use altcoins instead of bitcoin, then we can see that they are not in dependent on bitcoin.
Market movement of any coin will be depend on the project. If the project is fine to invest such as exchanges, smart contract, app integration or security oriented. You will get the people more like and invest on the project. This is how it reaches to expected marketcapital in their token sale time.
If project is not on the Ethrereum platform you will get the different marketplace movement buddy. This is I am saying because of last dump time trend I watched Vechain and USDT trend when all the goes to cheap.
This is how we have to conclude the bitcoin and altcoin are co-dependent one.