Ha ha! Nothing makes sense in crypto!

Seriously though, it's hard to choose. to measure the performance of a coin, I see if it is largely traded in USD (or USDT) or not. Coins like ETH, LTC, ZEC, DASH, NEO have several USD/T pairs and can be measured directly against USD. But in general I prefer to measure alts against BTC. I do my TA that way.

To see the value of any crypto investment I always reference it to BTC. Because if I could have done better by holding BTC, then why did I hold the alt? Having said that, I usually measure ICO performance in terms of the coin that I bought into the ICO with, normally ETH.