That will result in a myriad of forks. The main requirement of any decentralized system which has to establish consensus is that:
time for information progression << time for generating new information
Otherwise you risk symmetry breaking. E.g. if you generate a block every 10 seconds and it takes 100 seconds for the system to equilibrate, you may have solved 4-5 blocks before you get corrected by the network. And in the worst case the whole network splits due to maturity criteria and you get two realities for the block chain and only one can be true. Someone can exploit that by using the same coins in two environments which are topographically apart (network connectivity speaking...)
Yeah, right now, I agree with that. But technology will evolve and communication systems will be become faster and better. It's possible that, in 20 years from now, the whole system needs 2 ms to equilibrate, and having 10 minutes blocks instead of 2.5 will become useless. It's really hypothetical though, so there's not a lot to argue.
So you're making an economical argument: Litecoin allows bitcoin miners to use their old hardware which (hopefully) paid for itself. (However, GPU may be the last device which can be used by both networks). While this statement is true, it misses the point of the valuation of a commodity: It needs to justify existence by showing utility (in the long run). Valid selling points are:
- lower transaction fees (lower cost of use)
- more or equal acceptance in specific environments (fungibility)
- different resilience to attacks (risk of outage)
- incentive system for maintaining source code and software infrastructure (sustainability)
going back to the china argument, yes china is successful, but they score in utility: lower cost of production
And I admit that the assertion that litecoin needs to innovate is not necessarily true. However, I wonder why someone would want to acquire a cryptocurrency which does not improve anything and instead has a higher risk of vanishing from the face of the earth?
The economical argument is a part of it. Another part of why people want to acquire Litecoin is with the potential of it, like people are doing with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is far from being mature, but people are already buying it at a high price. We're only scratching the surface here, there's so much lying under and so much to try, I don't want to dismiss possibilities. As of today, I'm now using two different blockchains for my transactions, the Bitcoin blockchain and the Litecoin blockchain. What can we do with two well-supported blockchains? Can we jump from one to another for privacy purposes? Can we use one of them to back the value of the other? In the case of a 51% attack, can the other blockchain serve as an insurance for the economic value of crypto-currencies?
I'm not an economic specialist, but Bitcoin has always been alone. Now, we have the possibility of having a similar blockchain to it. I'm pretty sure we can find a use to this relation between them. Consider the quantity of different fiat currency or the different precious metal available, I don't see why we should be stuck to only one crypto-currency.
Yeah, the market is still small, but you need to have opportunities to see it grow. You can't have a Bitcoin market if Bitcoin isn't made, like you can't have a Litecoin market if you don't make Litecoin first. And anyway, the markets have already priced the value of the two currencies. Don't wonder why Bitcoin is around 12$ while Litecoin is at 0.04$. People prefer Bitcoin and the price reflect that.
Anyway, in the next months, we'll see how it goes. GPU miners are not going to disappear from the surface of the planet and the chances that they go for Litecoin (like I did) exists. When they're going to have their pockets full of Litecoin...well, that's what I call an opportunity.
*EDIT*
The more I think about it, the more I wonder. How can you track somebody who trades between the blockchains? If you send 10 BTC for 1000 LTC to somebody else....how the hell are you supposed to match the transactions? I mean, if I want to launder 10 BTC, I send them to Litedude. Litedude sends me 1000 LTC for it. My 10 BTC transaction is written in the BTC blockchain, and the 1000 LTC transaction is written in the LTC blockchain. I send my 1000 LTC to Bitdude in exchange for a fresh 10 BTC in a new wallet address. Somebody who follow me on the blockchain will think that I have 10 BTC less, but I still have it in another address. And transactions on the BTC blockchain are not executed at the same time as transactions on the LTC blockchain, matching BTC and LTC transactions would be a hell of a job. Especially since you can delay them as you wish.