Topic: Is competition healthy for Bitcoin? - page 10. (Read 11322 times)

Competition is good, but i don't think litecoin is competitive.  
Could you tell me about how competitive it is ?

bitcoin is pegged to the mtgox.com dollar price so miners can calculate their electricity costs to ensure profit
litecoin is pegged to the btc-e.com dollar price so miners can calculate their electricity costs to ensure profit
this is proven by the BTC price rise causing the bitcoin/litecoin direct trading prices to drop on btc-e.com, while the litecoin/dollar prices rise. and litecoin enthusiasts are happy, not sad.

yet ASICs will make it even harder to grab new adopters to bitcoin. i believe new adopters would use litecoin as their training ground, before investing huge wealth into ASIC's..


those three points i totally agree with.

and seeing as you work for bitpay. Can i just highlight the great PR skills bitpay has to this website just-eat.com and leave it as food for thought. although they do not have USA offices and services, they do have a regional HQ in canada, which should be close enough, and as you will see a wealth of business around the world once you get the foot in the door
 

As for litecoin being competitive or not, litecoin is exactly where bitcoin was when bitcoin was 14months old. its still new, but it is the only alt coin to survive this long without being hard wired to bitcoin (nmc).
many consider bitcoin as a teenager, still young with things to learn, trying out drugs and hacking computers for fun as most teenagers do. litecoin is the step brother who is still just a todler. yes they bicker and fight for attention and they don't have the same dad (satoshi/coblee) but when they grow up, who knows bitcoin could become drug dependant and stick with his drug fuelled ways or change his ways and succeed. and litecoin could either follow the same path, or learn from the step brother and find a different route in lfe.

plus there is an increase of services and people using litecoin everyweek. so watch this space.
http://www.litecoingames.com/
that link is to sway away troll replies that no one is using litecoin for anything else but mining. there are other links, but ill leave the fun of finding them to anyone interested.

Yes, competition is good.  The Bitcoin community should work hard at making Bitcoin as good as it can be to ensure the network effect takes hold and makes it as difficult as possible for an alt-coin to gain market share.  This doesn't mean that an alt-coin would ultimately have to cease to exist, it just means that Bitcoin should capture the bulk of the new adopters of digital currencies such that Bitcoin enjoys a better growth rate (and hence, appreciation in value) than these competitors.  The altcoins could still exist and serve some niche markets.

Yes, but not in the way you think.  Here's some insight into our thought process on this question: Bitcoin is currently the most secure method of electronic payment on the planet.  The network of miners is what provides that security and today it vastly exceeds that of any altcoin.  Bitpay will use the most secure and private payment method available for the actual transaction.  But that doesn't mean you couldn't use Litecoin, you just need a wallet that can automatically exchange Litecoin for Bitcoin just prior to a transaction.  Should something disastrous happen with Bitcoin and Litecoin became the most secure method of payment, we would transition to using Litecoin for the payment mechanism (and then you would need to exchange your Bitcoins for Litecoins just prior to conducting the transaction).

So, when I think about Litecoin (and the other alt coins), I think of it in terms of:
- providing that competitive pressure to Bitcoin that you allude to
- being a contingency solution should something disastrous happen to Bitcoin
- being of some utility for people that might like to have transactions that aren't visible on the Bitcoin blockchain

If there is to be 4 times the number of litcoin does that suggest that litecoin may achieve a quarter of bitcoins price, or is that totally dependent on merchants being able to accept both litecoin and Bitcoin and is that impractical?.

Competition is ALWAYS healthy

IMO, atm Bitcoin is pegged to Mtgox USD, and Litecoin is pegged to Bitcoin.

I've been taking a look into litecoin there seems to be a consensus that it would compete for the attention of current Bitcoin users as such its a bad thing, isn't there an argument in favour of having more than one crypto-coin, I would have thought that for anyone that hadn't heard of Bitcoin the idea it wasnt a one trick pony in that there's a few competing coins would add weight to the fact these are the future and here to stay rather than something that looks like a one off ongoing experiment for enthusiastic techies.

Is it likely bit pay etc. could offer checkout in any alt-coin of choice?