Topic: 2013-06-13 San Francisco Chronicle - This Is Litecoin, The 'Silver' to Bitcoin's (Read 1845 times)

good one

Intuitively I would like to see the emergence of an ecosystem of at least several established cryptocurrencies. I feel that having distinct networks organized around various protocols would give the ecosystem stability by not having a single point of failure. Many people here recognize the problems with Mt.Gox having (had) >80% of market share - I feel similar reasoning can apply when talking about Alt-coins.

Of course my confirmation bias was happy to see this:


I find this to be a very good argument for HOW Litecoin (and potentially others) could gain traction and establish a functional economy around the network.

Also big LOL at this thread being 235x more interesting and informative than the article it covers 

Exactly. The network is everything. We can argue about the merits of Litecoin all day, but the empirical fact is that, for whatever reason, the Litecoin network has grown (and continues). Why? That's a good question.

The whole thing is fairly obvious, its an attempt to prevent 'n' mining technology from participating. In computing, we call this the "walled garden" approach. That strategy hasn't worked out so well for other people who have tried it. Even Apple, who uses the biggest walled garden of them all - in the form of "captive computing" offered by their various i-devices, is seeing declines in revenue/usage compared to the "boom" years.

So lets compare, shall we?

BTC supports - CPU, GPU, FPGA, ASIC, < Insert New Tech Here! >

LTC supports - CPU, GPU, FGPA*, < Insert neatly trimmed garden hedge wall >

*FPGA and ASIC implementations are more expensive to create for Scrypt than for SHA-256 as used by Bitcoin, according to the wikipedia article. So, you could make the argument that they are economically unfeasible in LTC's current valuation. Also, every article/post I see about LTC is how proud they are about blocking out ASICs, so I doubt we'll see it occur.

When I look at Litecoin, beyond the obvious scaling problems the reduced time between confirmations produces, (witness the latest update due to 'age' blocks produced by miners - another casualty of tweaking the confirms setting.) I see a closed-end technology that doesn't embrace the latest advances, supposedly to "save" everyone who won't be buying new technology.

You might as well make a computer that only accepts BASIC programs and nothing else, or some other contrived notion - like cassette tapes or 8 Inch floppies - just because you don't want to go to SSDs and SATA drives.

This is a mindset that makes no sense to me, which makes me wonder what in the world they'll do when ASICs get bumped down in price, because 'n' technology is released - and becomes the new defacto standard in securing the Bitcoin network.

A.) Will they even be around at that point?

B.) Will they ditch their self-professed creed of not embracing ASIC and decide the next 'new' technology is the new boundary for the "garden wall"?

All of this makes me question its very existence, indeed.

What would be the reason for people to have X% of their transactions go via LTC, where X is not close to zero and is not going towards zero? In other words, what would be incentive for to use LTC over BTC? If there will be LTC-only merchants, why wouldn't they also accept BTC?

The same reason why people accept EUR, USD or CAD. How many different currencies a business like McDonald has to manage? Why does this business accept them? Simply because they recognize the value of it and those customers have that currency in their pockets. Merchants are simply interesting in getting what is in your pockets. Litecoin market is more or less 50 million$ right now and the only way of getting a piece of the pie is by accepting it. At the end, it's the same crypto-currency model with some different variables, a new name and a market to back it up. The foundations are still the same.

If there are no LTC-only merchants, but some BTC-only merchants, why would anybody keep LTC? Why would BTC merchants care to also accept LTC if BTC is accepted wider? Or, what are the dynamics that could lead to parallel acceptance of BTC and LTC throughout the market?

If we speak exclusively about the merchants, like I said, it's about what is in your pockets. If we speak from an investor/speculator point of view, it could about the possibility of hedging the currencies.

I'll give you a real life exemple, myself. I currently don't trust the Bitcoin value, I think it's going down because of the bubble. I also think that Litecoin is overvalued(the whole market is overvalued because of that bubble), but for many reasons, I think there's a possibility that a transfer of wealth occur from Bitcoin to Litecoin similar to the transfer of hashpower, so, while Bitcoin goes down, Litecoin could hold its value. I wanted to keep some money on the market, didn't want to get everything in fiat, so currently, I have 0 Bitcoins and a couple of thousands of Litecoins.

I'm not shopping with Bitcoin unless that bubble deflates completely, so if you want the couple of thousands of value in my pockets, accept Litecoins.


Well, that the network is already that powerful is proof that Litecoin attracts new miners.

As an average Joe with an average GPU I started to give up on Bitcoin mining around October 2012. I was only making a trickle of coins compared to what I had been mining before so I decided to leave it to the professionals. I don't see how Litecoin will attract any new average Joe miners when the network is already so powerful. 

Lets suppose Bitcoin continues growing and captures meaningful portion of worldwide market and grows beyond that. What would be the reason for people to have X% of their transactions go via LTC, where X is not close to zero and is not going towards zero? In other words, what would be incentive for to use LTC over BTC? If there will be LTC-only merchants, why wouldn't they also accept BTC? If there are no LTC-only merchants, but some BTC-only merchants, why would anybody keep LTC? Why would BTC merchants care to also accept LTC if BTC is accepted wider? Or, what are the dynamics that could lead to parallel acceptance of BTC and LTC throughout the market?

Another question: 500 years ago, would people use silver side-by-side with the gold as a currency if gold was easier to divide in smaller (cheaper) pieces and reassemble? In other words, if the main physical limitation of gold wasn't that limiting for small daily transactions? Wouldn't network effect of the gold eliminate any need in silver-as-a-currency then? If not, why?

PS. I don't accept argument "because there are miners mining it". Miners mine *because* somebody will trade their goods for minted coins (or they speculate that it will be the case in the future), not the other way around. Early bitcoins were mined and purchased because of the expectation of future worthiness and similar recognition of fundamental properties by other early adopters.

You can be as logical as you want, but if the market decide to adopt another coin for irrational reasons, there can be large opportunities.

Also, other coins do bring new things to the table, but most people here don't care about the algorithm or how fast transaction confirms are...

Lastly, PPc really brings a new proof-of-stake concept, which is why I own plenty of PPC.

Feel free to PM me your email if you'd like me to include you on my Alternate Cryptocurrency newsletter. 

I should be sending an update within the coming weeks.  Many coin prices are down now, so there are buying opportunities.

Because it's money and it has value. Whatever currency is #1 or #2 is somewhat irrelevant. If you feel you've been paid at the right price, who cares about the name of the currency?

For your information, Litecoin market value is the same as the Bitcoin market value of last year. If Bitcoin last year was good enough as a currency, Litecoin today is also good enough as a currency. As long as you have confidence in the value of the currency, everything is fine.

Also, I'm not a big fan of alt-coins. They are interesting experiment, but considering that around 95% of them have failed, they are usually pump and dump schemes or simply useless. I don't really trust Namecoin and even if I think that PPCoin has an interesting concept, I'm not touching that with a 50-feet pole. The rest is bullcrap. I only support Litecoin because of:
- The growing network effect
- The dev team is awesome

In the end, if we use the success average of alt-coins, it's probably safer to stay away of any of them anyway. If there is ever a Bitcoin killer coin, it's going to be a really long shot (really long).

And as a speculator:
 
litecoin = more risky than bitcoin + no inovation = no thanks

As a bitcoin user, I don't see why I should bother with another crypto that brings me absolutly no more advantages than bitcoin.
On the user point of view, what's the point of using litecoin when I can use bitcoin instead
Not that I'm against litecoin and other cryptos. It's just that I really, really dont care about them until one of them brings more significant advantages.

Litecoin will always stay in the shadow of bitcoin. No more.

Litecoin success is not dependant on the variables of the software, it's not about being faster or more secure (or less, but whatever). Litecoin success is dependant on the network effect, like every succesful currency. I'm not going to argue about the technical checklist of any coin, since there is absolutely no proof that any variable is better than other ones. There's absolutely no point in arguing and comparing Scrypt or SHA-256, or whatever time confirmation, because they are only variables without any context.

But, when you mix the context AND the variables, you can get interesting results. Scrypt algorithm, in the context of ASIC appearing on the mining market of SHA-256 suddenly changes everything. I consider the GPU miners crucial people in the adoption of a crypto-currency. GPU miners are average joe with advanced knowledge of computers (by advanced, I mean more than the usual PC user). They are competent enough to use crypto-currencies, and there is a lot of them. They are probably more easier to convince to crypto-currencies than any investors/merchants/bank/businesses/general population. Why? They have:
- Money
- Good knowledge of computers (currently required to use crypto-currencies)
- They like computers! They could do mining for fun. Proof is in the mining section of any *coin forum.

They are the ideal population to kickstart a crypto-currency.

I know there is wishful thinking (ASIC are going to make GPU disappear, like magic! for real!), but these people are going to continue their existence. Their GPU are still going to exist and be used for something. Currently, ASIC are kicking the GPU miners out of the Bitcoin market. Maybe all of those people will stop their Bitcoin mining and stuff their GPU up their ass (or sell on eBay, or anything to make the GPU disappear), but it's not going to happen. GPU miners are going to regroup somewhere, they will find a new mining hobby. My guess is that this new mining hobby will be Litecoin. My guess is pretty good at the moment, since the Litecoin network is the equivalent of Bitcoin network of September-October 2012. It means that, in theory, ALL the Bitcoin miners back from September are currently mining Litecoins.

This. is. huge.

ASICs, by pushing out the GPUs out of the mining market, are kickstarting Litecoin and providing the so-needed network effect to this currency. In a way, Litecoin is simply lucky of having the right variables for the right context.

I strongly believe that the GPU miners are the makers of any coin. If you want your coin to succeed, you need those GPU miners.

Most anti-LTC arguments here have been thrown around since the beginning of Litecoin, yet both its network hashing power and prices just kept growing.

Some Bitcoin oligarchy need to have a reality check.

This.

Litecoin will grow as long as there are bored teenagers with free GPUs mining it. While the rest of the industry deciding where to invest $: in BTC mining hardware or LTC mining hardware will all go to BTC as it is more expensive. In the end, the hashing power of LTC will be laughable comparing to BTC and overall support among non-geeky merchants will be in favor of BTC (because there is network effect).

Fundamentally, LTC provides no extra security or features over Bitcoin (I think it's not worse either, except for shorter block intervals lead to 4x more of wasted computing time — during block propagation). "Max amount of coins" is nonsense — it's just a measure of divisibility of the total supply. With 2100 trillion BTC units we won't need any more divisibility any time soon. Time for first confirmation is nonsense. It still does not help with instant transactions and provides 4x less security than 1 BTC confirmation. You have to wait *time*, not *blocks* to get some level of security. Scrypt is different from double SHA256, but it's irrelevant for mining. The only meaningful thing it does is that it protects weaker network from Bitcoin ASICs that may try 51% attack or temporarily increase difficulty way too much (like what happened with Terracoin).

Litecoin is here only because CPU/GPU miners who lose to ASICs, play this game in the meantime. If it does not fade out in a couple of years, it will still be very limited speculative game while BTC will grow further and expand to more and more merchants. Economically, there is no reason for people to use both LTC and BTC and have both markets constantly expanding.

The silver to bitcoin isn't litecoin, it is silver.

Was Bitcoin back in September 2012 was sufficiently protected? Because right now, Litecoin network is at this level.


But Bitcoin itself is a point of failure. A successful 51% attack or a mistake creating an hardfork that can't be solved without hard losses can crush the whole crypto-currency economy. If multiples crypto-currencies emerge, you have some redundancy in your economy. If Bitcoin have some serious problems, you can switch to Litecoin and still keep your business running with the same currency model.

If you want to get out of Bitcoin, without alt-coins, your only choice is to go back to fiat. Having Litecoin as an option gives you the possibility of hedging against Bitcoin.

There's also the painfully obvious point that if Litecoin had anything to offer, the main Bitcoin client would be soft-forked to include it, rendering Litecoin useless. (again.)

Litecoin has nothing new to add. Bitcoin has all the development and tools. The altcoin is a good experiment, but it solves no problem that hasn't been solved for bitcoin.

I wouldn't go that far.   Protection simply needs to be at a sufficient level to where performing an attack is both economically costly and unprofitable.  Litecoin might reach that, but I don't know that today it is sufficiently protected.      

Indeed, all proof of work based scamcoins are doomed unless they can overtake Bitcoin. The longer they coexist, the more probable an attack from Bitcoin supporters becomes. A different algorithm only delays that.