Wow, you certainly did promise a long write up. I am impressed (and not being sarcastic either)!
Coinhoarder, as you know i've personally never had anything against you or any other community member at all. But im sure you can expect a reply from me as well hehe. You took a long time to post this, and deserve and equal length and thought in a response
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First of all, I congratulate you for posting something good to read rather than "Litecoin is dead cause I say it is" that I see from the normal trolls
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Thank you for your genuine, level headed, and thorough response. It is posts such as this that I was hoping to receive instead of just getting flamed. You are setting a good example for fellow Litecoiners, and I appreciate the respectful tone in which your post was made.
I feel like the argument that “Litecoin has the best development team” is quite disrespectful to the many other talented and devoted developers of other alt coins. You might as well call them all idiots. In fact, there are many developers that are going above and beyond what the Litecoin developers are doing. Litecoin has decided that it is content to simply follow in the steps of Bitcoin, something I tried hard to lobby against. Litecoin is merely developing things that Bitcoin has already made, such as Electrum and Android wallets. I will give them (well… Warren) a bit of credit for improving some security issues on both Litecoin and Bitcoin, but they do not see the glaring issue in that the end users don’t actually ever see these improvements. Nor do they particularly care… what I mean by that is… Have any of you ever had a problem because of a security issue in the Litecoin/Bitcoin client? I would be surprised to hear one person tell me yes they have, as after using it for years I haven’t and most cases that pop up seem to be user error.
While I personally feel that Litecoin has some of the best and the brightest, I certainly do not doubt the efforts and skills of other developers at all. There are a many of them that are talented and at first glance a few of them really want to try to make improvements upon this young moment (i.e cryptos).
With your second part you seem to contradict your statements. At first you congratulate the LTC dev team for making improvements with security and in the same breath mention that you never heard of security issues and therefore end users dont care. Come on man.....if there were any serious security issues with the BTC or LTC clients then it would be a huge issue with the entire crypto movement. Security at this point in the game is the number one item that needs to be taken care of more than anything else. I would like to use an analogy that if there was any serious security issues with a bank (like if a bank was robbed) and there was no FDIC to fall abck on, peoples money would be truly lost. Therefore there would be a heck of a lot less people that go to that bank. End users care about security, just see how many of crypto people out there really care about security on exchanges after the entire empty gox fiasco. Security is key!
I agree that security is very important, if everyone can't trust Litecoin then no one will use it. I did not mean to make it sound like I didn't think that is important, and I think perhaps I didn't word my statement properly to convey what I was trying to say. I feel that by focusing most of the development effort on improving security, that it makes it hard for the average crypto currency user to tell that Litecoin is actually being developed and improved upon. Unless they really keep up with the development updates on the Litecoin forums, they are never really going to notice or see these changes. If you open up the Litecoin client, apart from coin control, it looks about the same as it did 2 years ago featurewise. When people that are already involved in the crypto community and are looking to invest in something new, which is where I feel Litecoin has the biggest possibility to gain more users (that's how I found Litecoin,) they are going to see something that looks almost exactly similar to Bitcoin. That might not be so interesting to them as some of the newer innovative coins, and they may be less likely to invest or support Litecoin because of it.
I know that my personal opinion is that Litecoin is quite boring compared to all these new exciting projects. I feel like some of the newer projects have one-upped Bitcoin/Litecoin by adding different services and features that Bitcoin/Litecoin don't have, which makes them distinguishably different from Bitcoin. I feel like this adds perceived value or speculative value to the crypto currency, more so than a ton of security updates. If a Bitcoin clone came out today that was 100% focused on security, I would venture to say that it may not go over so well. However, if they added neat features then it adds to the perceived value, and people are more likely to invest or support the currency. Litecoin needs to alter their mixture of development efforts in my opinion to reflect this.
I also don't like the perception that people are prone to arriving at, that simply because a crypto currency is new and has new/different features than Bitcoin/Litecoin, that means it is filled with security issues. Sure, I'm certain there are some issues, but at the same time there are certainly still some vulnerabilities Bitcoin/Litecoin that will be brought to light sooner or later. Any program with as many lines of code as a crypto currency has, is likely vulnerable to security issues no matter how big the budget is and how talented the developers are. These security issues may or may not be known yet, and it may take a while for them to be uncovered, but I feel this is happening all the time. The most recent episode of the heart bleed SSL vulnerability comes to mind. As long as the developers of these new currencies are smart, careful, talented, security minded, and had a thorough security audit of their code done by a 3rd party, I don't really see the issue.
I believe it is unfair to say because something is new that it is full of security issues. It goes a long way in that most of these newer innovative currencies have not had huge security issues that would completely destroy the value of the currency. Sure, there have been some issues here and there, but nothing that would be a crippling blow in my opinion and nothing that other currencies (even Bitcoin/Litecoin) do not face themselves. I agree it is risky to jump into a new alternative currency that may have security issues, but the old saying goes "no risk no reward." Those that take the risk by adopting these currencies early might end up coming out very well (example: Nxt IPO coins).
Crypto currency users/investors want new and improved features, this is something they can actually see and use, and that adds value to the currency in their mind. I think merely following in Bitcoin’s footsteps is possibly a path to becoming obsolete. We already have Bitcoin, we don’t need another currency that is almost exactly like it except for a few changed parameters. By staying three steps behind Bitcoin in the crypto currency wars, they are positioning themselves to be obsolete if Bitcoin is ever supplanted by a new crypto currency that is much better. I made a hard push to get Litecoiners behind the idea of implementing new decentralized features, such as asset exchanges and decentralized applications, and I was completely ignored by the developers and dismissed by most of the Litecoin faithful. This is how the “best development team” operates? Completely ignoring their user base and someone that has gone out of his way to support Litecoin time and time again? You would think there is no value in the ideas of creating Dcorps/Dapps the way I was dismissed, but as you can see with the money flowing in on projects like BitsharesAGS/Swarm/Etcetera, a large portion of the crypto currency community agrees with me.
With your first part, crypto currency investors are really two types of people out there. So lets get that out of the way first.
1. The long term investors
2. the short term investors (i.e. the pump and dumpers)
Claiming there is one type is really not helpful to the conversation. This is the same as penny stocks versus investing in Microsoft, google, and other major companies. In the end, yes they both produce a net profit, but the means and the thoughts associated with them are two different worlds.
As far as the crypto market is concerned, there are really two choices in terms of long term investment, and those are BTC and LTC (which you have admitted throughout your post as far as a current leader albeit you claim it is dying a slow death).I see what you are saying in terms of different types of investors, however I think you are over-generalizing the different types of crypto investors. I would say there are at least four types of investors:
1. Long term risk adverse investors (Bitcoin/Litecoin)
2. Long term risk prone investors (DCorps/Cryptocoin 2.0s/Etc.)
3. Short term investors (pump and dumpers, but don't forget day traders as well)
4. Savvy investors whom spread the risk around inbetween Bitcoin/Litecoin and DCorps/Cryptocoin 2.0s/Etc.
This is a matter of opinion, but I feel that you have the bolded statement backwards. I currently look at Bitcoin/Litecoin as a short term investment, and the newer currencies as a long term investment. Many Bitcoiners will admit that some of these newer currencies have more bells and whistles than Bitcoin, and the only thing keeping Bitcoin on top is the network effect and perhaps the venture capital that is flowing in (which is not really the case for Litecoin when it comes to VCs.) I feel like as the public finds out about crypto currencies and educates themselves about them, the network effect will slowly lose its stranglehold on the industry, and users will look for currencies that have improved upon Bitcoin greatly. Bitcoin itself is not invulnerable to being dethroned, and I feel like Litecoin is in the same boat. If Bitcoin doesn't continue to improve itself and adapt, it may very well find itself as the #2 crypto someday. Luckily they have one thing going for them that Litecoin doesn't, in that there are several Bitcoin 2.0 protocols being built on top of Bitcoin, which could support its value in this case.
"We already have a Bitcoin", yes we do, its called Bitcoin. We also have Litecoin as a strong community and supporter to the crypto atmosphere as a whole.
There are many other coins with strong communities, I don't really see this as an argument for Litecoin. I would venture to say that some of the newer communities are stronger in terms of the amount of developers involved. For example, it is rumored that Ethereum literally attracted something like 500 developers almost over night, and there are a ton of projects in the works. I think a community full of developers (like Bitcoin) is more important than a community of marketers and promoters. I can't believe I'm quoting this, but in the Field Of Dreams the saying goes, "if you build it they will come". I like this line of thinking when it comes to cryptos. Although they might not be widely adopted right when they come out, I think eventually if there is added substance and value on top of Bitcoin/Litecoin, that it is only a matter of time before the crypto community comes. (wow.. that totally didn't sound right..
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I also feel like whether an alternative coin is directly helping with Bitcoin development or not, everyone is helping with Bitcoin development by default (assuming their projects are open source.) I look at alternative crypto currencies as a playground for developers to try out new things and ideas, and if something is truly innovative, then Bitcoin now has a road map as to how to integrate this into Bitcoin by looking over the code. The same could be said about Litecoin, but the problem with that is the development team is extremely small when compared to Bitcoin's development team. Furthermore, Litecoin's development team's budget is quite small in comparison to Bitcoin, and they would likely need a bigger team to make some of these changes. This is one thing that annoyed me about Litecoin is that there are some people sitting on huge piles of coins (no different from Bitcoin or any other coin for that matter), that are not contributing to the development fund or involved with the community. I know you are not one of those people, so don't take that the wrong way.
I really am impressed that you stated "if bitcoin is ever replaced", this tells me you are at least a reasonable person to discuss things with.
Definitely, I think every crypto is vulnerable to becoming irrelevant. This is the wild west, things are developing very quickly, and anything can certainly happen in the future. One month in the crypto world is like 1 year in most industries. I am shocked at how quickly things are coming along, it is frankly very hard to keep track of everything although I do my best.
With that said, right now with market adoption and brand Bitcoin is light years ahead of everything else, mainly because it is "the first". the advantages of having Litecoin in addition to bitcoin are quite a few, and it goes well beyond the technological aspects and into sociological, security, and human nature aspects.
1. Its a separate blockchain, God forbid anything happens to Bitcoin, Litecoin is a well known "backup"
2. We do not do a copy and paste of its code, from my understanding we are 2 versions behind bitcoin in case an implementation goes wrong
3. Litecoin is the oldest successful alternate to Bitcoin
4. Litecoin had one of if not the most fair launch ever, this is to include other different POW coins (I can elaborate on this in another post if someone were so inclined)
5. There is more, but the point is its a "trusted brand", evidence can be seen as in the trade volume and coupling to BTC. Essentially the trade volume is due to the fact that LTC is being used as arbitrage between BTC/LTC. It's trusted enough that people program bots to use it and its a safe number two with a possible future increase.
6. There is more, but hopefully I proved my points
1. As of now there are also 100s of different block chains as a "back up". This might of been more correct 2 years ago, but now there are many back ups that arent simply copy and paste coins. So, I don't see this as an argument for specifically Litecoin.. it is more of an argument for alternative crypto currencies in general.
2. I'd like to make the same point here as I did in #1, as there are a lot of currencies that didn't copy and paste available or in development today. Again, I feel like this statement might of been more correct 1 to 2 years ago (and still applies today to the pump and dumpers) when it was mostly copy and paste coins being released. Today it is very different. There are so many cryptos that did not copy and paste, that I will probably never use or learn about them all. It is the sad reality, but I think that is a good problem to have. The alternative currency movement has come a long ways in the past 1 to 2 years, and people are moving more from pump and dump coins to coins that are actually innovative. Some more than others, but nonetheless I feel it is a step in the right direction.
3. I agree with you.
4. I agree Litecoin had a fair launch, but I no longer consider this a feature. As stated in the OP, this is just common sense. During the flurry of copy and paste coins I think this point was hammered home to developers and now we are seeing much more fair releases of coins. I haven't brought up this argument before, but it is something I've been thinking about.. I would venture to say that some of the newer cryptos being fairly released today will have a much better distribution than Bitcoin/Litecoin due to the fact that the community has grown a lot over the years. There are more people around that are more likely to go mine a new coin than there was 2-3 years ago. I feel like we've yet to see the most fairly released currency, as it will come well after cryptos are more widely adopted for this reason. I will admit that when you look at Litecoin's distribution compared to Bitcoin, you guys look like saints. In Bitcoin, there is far too large of a percentage of available coins in a small percentage of people's pockets.
5. I don't buy the "trusted brand" argument for making Litecoin a good long term investment. As you can tell, I think even Bitcoin is prone to irrelevancy and they are the most trusted out of all the cryptos. You have a point about the volume of Litecoin, and I agree that is definitely a good thing it has going for it. I think this dynamic is likely to change overtime though as the newer most innovative coins separate themselves from the rest, and it is likely that one or two of those coins will also be used for arbitrage (they are already to a smaller extent.) High volume is a good thing for cryptos as it allows people to sell and buy without affecting the price too horribly, so I will concede a point to you here. I just think that it is very possible that could change down the road. I'm pretty sure people are programming bots for just about every crypto by the way, as some of the lesser used cryptos will have the most opportunity due to there being more competition with other bots in Bitcoin/Litecoin. For example, if you picked a lesser known coin with decent volume, it makes sense to me that this could be more profitable due to the lack of competition. This is why I never got into day trading... its hard to compete with bots haha, those things pissed me off when they'd always come in and instantly outbid or underbid me by one Satoshi.
As far as your thread about incorporating all these cool neato fantastic wiz bang features that all these other coins have I have a challenge for you. I would love to see you make the same threads here in Bitcointalk and get Gavin to respond to it stating he will work on it. If you really feel that strongly, you can certainly launch a campaign to do the same here. I would expect your results to be the same. This is because the devs recognize that all these gimmicks are really nothing more than gimmicks (with the exception of the new POW coins, but that would require a folk for LTC and I will address forks later on here)
And BTW you do not speak for the entire user base, while I respect your opinions as I always respect our community members you certainly do not speak for me.
I think it is a mistake to think that Bitcoin would need new features as much as Litecoin does, because they have a much stronger stranglehold on the industry. They have many more resources when it comes to developers and funding, and are well positioned to improve upon Bitcoin- exponentially more so than Litecoin. I understand that Litecoin really can't do much about this, as Bitcoin is king right now, but it is a sad reality that Litecoin has to face.
If you look in the development subforum and the project development subforum here on bitcointalk, this is already happening in a large scale with Bitcoin. Then go over and compare that to the Litecoin development and project development subforum, and you will see what I am getting at. There is no need for me to push the importance of innovation over here, because there are so many people doing it already, and honestly many of these people are more qualified to do so as I am not a developer. There are many people coming up with new ideas and features that can be built into Bitcoin, and I think the best ones will eventually make it in. Bitcoin is not writing everything off as a gimmick like Litecoin seems to be, they are developing and innovating. There will be some good (true innovation) and some bad (gimmicky innovation) that come with that, but the best ideas will succeed and be implemented.
Yes, Smoothie has pointed this out to me already and I do agree it was a bad choice of words to say what the community as a whole wants, because obviously opinions differ. A better way of saying it would be that by judging by the responses of both the free market (.03 LTC/BTC to .016 LTC/BTC) and community member's opinions shared on these forums, that the crypto community does indeed want innovation. There is no point in reinventing the wheel, but if you can do it better than it was done before, then why not? It doesn't make any sense to me not to want to embrace innovation and brush everything off as a gimmick. How would technology have ever improved to what it is today if everything was brushed aside as a gimmick?
This is not the only case where the developers have done as they pleased, many voiced concerns about ASICs coming online and ruining the decentralized nature of the network, making people pay for hardware that will never ROI and sadly has little to no resale value, and suscept the Litecoin mining community to pre-ordering hardware they may never even see (or at least they likely will never see on time before the difficulty skyrockets like what happened with Bitcoin.) After a year and a half of investing in ASIC mining technology, running group buys, and hosting hardware, I can honestly say it is a fool’s game. The original batch 1 Avalons broke even and made a hefty profit, and almost every ASIC offering since then has fallen short of simply allowing their customers to break even. I will no longer support ASIC mining or the companies that make them, and when that sentiment is shared by a large group of people (I know I’m not alone,) it can be a very dangerous thing and lead to centralization of the network. I am worried for both Bitcoin and Litecoin in those regards… when a crypto currency becomes centralized, what is the point really? Satoshi would not approve.
I...agree with you on this point. I have 1 asic, and this is one that was donated to me from lightning asic as a test unit (I was the lucky recipient of one of the worlds first scrypt asics, disclosure now, its complete crap lol).
This as mentioned by many members, Waren, and even Coblee himself have stated that there is no good way to take care of this issue. The con is that the network itself is somewhat centralized (but way better than how BTC is now), but the pro is in fact a stronger network, which you agreed on in your postings. In addition, in order to avoid this it would have required a hard fork, which would have the possibility of undermining the entire coin itself.
It's really a choice, do we want more capital poured into Litecoin and continue to pour in via infrastructure, or do we hard fork and let investors know that it isn't as "safe" as they wanted it to be. If you think about it, from a capital perspective, who the heck would invest in something that people could change on a whim and completely demolish your investments?
Although I do somewhat worry about it, but there is no good answer at this point other than letting the coin evolve into what BTC has become.
I pretty much agree with you here, and perhaps I was too hard on them for this. There really is no obvious answer to stopping ASICs in most PoW protocols, and there may never be one. However, I don't feel like we as a community simply have to accept this fact. This is why PoS coins really interest me, it is the only solid solution to keeping ASICs off the network thus far. Most of the coins that have been sold as being ASIC resistance are not really ASIC resistant at all. If it makes since in terms of being a profitable venture, then ASICs will be made for these coins sooner or later, as we saw with both Bitcoin and Litecoin. It is very scary to me that decentralized currencies might end up being not so decentralized in a couple years. It is kind of sad that there isn't really a good solution for this in terms of PoW, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look into alternatives. Litecoin and Bitcoin are pretty much stuck with Sha256 and Scrypt, and I don't think it would have necessarily been a good idea to change it, but this doesn't change the fact that Scrypt ASICs are out and the network is becoming less decentralized. I think both Bitcoin and Litecoin are screwed in these regards, and it will be interesting to see if everyone will be OK with the network becoming more centralized. Personally, that is not OK with me.
Litecoin’s trade volume and market cap dwarf those of other alternative crypo currencies. Although this is true, I feel like this is very dangerous reasoning for determining the future of a cryptocoin and should not be a large factor of your decision. Have you ever heard of the banks that are “too big to fail”? This is the kind of reasoning this reminds me of. Does anyone remember when Facebook came out of nowhere and made Myspace obsolete? Blockbuster got killed by Netflix and Redbox. Dell, once a leader in the IT sector has fallen behind its competitors. Kodak’s stock price is about 96% lower than it was in 1997 due to the advent of personal printers, improvements in software, and file sharing. Microsoft was at the forefront of technology at one point, and now they are playing catch up when it comes to search engines, internet video, ebooks, smartphones, and tablet PCs. Motorola was huge when mobile telephones first came out, yet they failed to focus on smartphones with new features and rapidly lost market share to companies like Apple, LG, and Samsung. Sears got huge by sending out catalogs and allowing customers to order things from home, but failed to capitalize when ecommerce became much more popular to consumers. A Sony Walkman used to be today’s iPod. Yahoo… Toys R Us… need I say more?
For this section, I like to do the grandma test. Go call your grandmother and ask her about Bitcoins (or any other older person). More times than not statistically speaking, you will get a "what is that" answer. The crypto eco-system is so very new, that all of these gimmicks at the end of the day really dont matter. What matters is being safe and brand recognition, which LTC have both of which is light years ahead of other alts (with the exception of dogecoin and Bitcoin). I mention this because you are talking about VERY WELL established companies that are uplifted by new comers. But how do you uplift a new comer by another new comer? Maybe sometime in the future, when BTC and LTC are accepted worldwide and I can pay my phone and electric bill with them, these new payment systems would be awesome! But also by that time, BTC and LTC will already be accepted by these companies.....so I really fail to see the argument here.
Well.. my grandmother knows about Bitcoin, but that is just because she has a crypto nut as a grandson! I understand what you are saying here though, the majority certainly haven't. I don't like that you keep referring to all innovations as gimmicks, this is a common misconception in my opinion. I suggest you really look deep into what some of these newer projects are doing and you will find that some of them are more than just gimmicks. I agree brand recognition and security are important, but this goes along with my "if you build it they will come" mantra. I feel like this will work itself out over time for the newer currencies if they are successful and do what they plan to do well.
As more people find out about Bitcoin they are more likely to find out about these other projects. In my opinion.. at first glance they will find some of the newer projects much more interesting or investment worthy. I know that I am not alone in this line of thinking, but I am obviously not trying to speak for everyone. We're just speculating here right? I try to base my opinions and speculation off of facts, but it is necessary to connect the dots to speculate accurately.
Brand recognition and the network effect can be very strong, but it is not nearly as strong for Litecoin as it is Bitcoin. I feel like this is another common misconception. Bitcoin's network effect stretches much wider than Bitcointalk and a few articles on Google News, and you can't really say the same for Litecoin... at least not nearly to the same extent.
Also I'm not buying the Bicoin/Litecoin is accepted at more places argument as a argument for it being a good long term investment. Sure, maybe for a short term investment, as it is true that currently Bitcoin/Litecoin are accepted at more places than any other crypto. However, for reasons I've already outlined I am certain that will change. I will go over them quickly... businesses are in the business of making money. The businesses that give their customers the most options to pay will likely be the most popular. Have you ever walked into a store or gas station that only accepts cash and you don't have any? Wouldn't it be convenient to also be able to use your debit card? Now replace cash and debit card with different cryptocoins and you see where I am going. Consumers will demand more payment options, therefore businesses will demand more payment options from the payment processors, consequently payment processors will adopt more cryptos as time goes on. Right now they are not really jumping at it (well.. except for coinpayments), however I feel like that is because it is hard to tell which currencies they should add and which ones they should not. Over time the newer, innovative, best of the best, cryptos will become more apparent as they slide up the market cap list, and this is when they will be merged into some of the larger payment processors like Bitpay. I think Bitpay is reluctant to add more coins because they are one of the biggest lobbiers for Bitcoin and to add a bunch of coins the common users don't know much about might hurt their image in the Bitcoin community or confuse their customers. Over time as the public gets more educated on cryptos I believe they will have to add more payment options or succumb to irrelevancy. I also feel like this applies to exchanges as well. They are in the business of making money, so the more cryptos they add then the more trading that will take place and the more money they will make because of adding new cryptos. I even think they will eventually allow you to fund your account for different cryptos.. goes along the same train of thought as payment processors. The most forward thinking payment processors and exchanges accept many cryptos (coinpayments.net and btc-e or crypsty just for examples).
Due to rapid technological advancements and the competition being innovative and forward thinking (seeing a pattern here?), companies can become obsolete very fast and I see no reason why this does not (or could not) hold true with crypto currencies. The network effect is very powerful, however I feel like the network effect is exponentially more powerful for Bitcoin than it is for Litecoin. It is Bitcoin that is in the news all day every day, not Litecoin. Although Litecoin does get more attention than most other alternative crypto currencies, I feel this is because they are the guys to beat right now. As you can see in the last paragraph, this could change quickly and this is not a good argument for Litecoin holding its number two spot.
See above please
. Although I agree that Litecoin isnt "marketed" as much as Litecoin, but I personally plan to see this change.
Sorry, I know you mean well, but at this time no one can compete with the power of Bitcoin's network effect. It's just not possible.
Although Litecoin may be accepted by more exchanges and merchants than other alternative crypto currencies, the more innovative and valuable ones are sure to follow. Multi coin payment processing is going to become more popular as more coins come out. Having a different payment processor for every crypto currency is just not a smart way of doing things, and the ones that only accept one or two crypto currencies will be less popular with merchants over time. If someone wants to buy something from me with Sex Coin, I am going to want their business as I can simply exchange the Sex Coin for whatever coin I would like. If the consumers have more options to pay, the more likely they are to purchase something. I am sure that I sold a few extra physical Litecoins because I used coinpayments.net which accepts something like 30+ crypto coins. I had it setup to automatically exchange the coins that I didn’t want. It was stupidly easy and got me a little extra business. What merchant wouldn’t want this? They will choose the payment processor that supports the most coins, and the most stubborn payment processors will be slowly phased out. Exchanges make money by people trading crypto currencies (duh, right?). There is no reason they will not keep adding coins to trade alongside other coins to increase their profit. By not adding new coins, whether it’s a scam coin or not, they are leaving money off the table and it makes no sense.
Lets work backwards, if your claim about companies (exchanges and payment processors) is true, then please tell me why certain exchanges will not accept nothing but Bitcoin. And even with that, there are a few major ones (BTC-China) that only accept BTC and LTC (before you go into the Bobby Lee and Charlie argument, I will state that Bobby, while being CEO, can't make these types of decisions solely. It requires the rest of the founders to be on board which were reluctant for a long time).
As far as acceptance, I will go with a somewhat good analogy. Betamax and VHS. Betamax was hands down the better technology, but they didnt have a controlling market share nor did they have the marketing that VHS had.
I think this hasn't happened yet because the exchanges/payment processors can't decide which cryptos to add and which ones not to add. I don't think they want to add something that's could die in a month. So, I think they are taking a very reasonable approach by waiting to see how the market works itself out before jumping on board with other cryptos. As to the major exchanges not accepting or trading some of the newer cryptos.. they have a reputation to uphold as they handle millions of dollars daily. It might prove worrisome to their customers if they were adding coins all the time, as it should be worrisome to them.. if they are adding a lot of coins then they likely aren't vetting them properly. I understand why they have been so slow to accept anything other than Bitcoin.. hell, Litecoin was in the same boat as all the other cryptos until maybe the past year. There were only a handful of exchanges that allowed you to trade it or accept it. In summary, I believe this will work itself out overtime as the newer coins are proven to be secure, and people become more knowledgeable about cryptos.
I don't think the Betamax and VHS example is necessarily applicable to cryptos. In my mind, there is no reason why multiple cryptos can't coexist as long as they provide different features and are useful. Why does one have to dominate and assassinate the other? With multi wallets, multi coin payment processors, exchanges adopting new coins.. there is no reason I can see why there can't be more than one popular crypto.
The Litecoin is silver to Bitcoin’s goal is simply a marketing slogan, nothing more nothing less. You could just as easily say Xcoin is silver to Bitcoin’s gold, and it wouldn’t be an incorrect statement. This thinking is similar to the “Litecoin is too big to fail” dogma, as we’ve seen with many of the technology giants that have been surpassed by innovative and forward thinking competition, this could change very quickly. I don’t look at Litecoin having ATMs as being a huge deal, as most people are looking to install Bitcoin ATMs. For Litecoin to compete with Bitcoin in the ATM space, they need to hope that Bitcoin ATMs are made to support Litecoin. If Bitcoin ATMs can be made to support Litecoin (and duh they can), then there is nothing stopping them from supporting other crypto currencies.
The only people claiming the "Silver to BTC's gold" are mainly trolls (I know you arent a troll, but others are). We have even had people in the community say we need to get away from this slogan because LTC can stand on its own two feet.
As far as the ATM's, they are really nice to see. But lets be honest....because cryptos as a whole are new who REALLY uses these? They are a niche market right now that may explode in the future, but right now are just a gimmick.
The rest of this paragraph can be related to betamax versus VHS again.
I guess we agree on this except for the betamax/vhs comparison.
Yes Litecoin’s network speed dwarfs that of other Scrypt coins, and it is likely much more secure than those. However, I think it is silly to focus on only Scrypt coins. There are other innovative and valuable alternative crypto currencies that are not Scrypt-based. Some of the newer & most popular ones you can’t even mine them at all (like PoS coins). Making that a reason to be better than another ALT coin that does not have mining is like Mike Tyson fighting a baby. You can’t mine those coins, so how is Litecoin being the most secure Scrypt coin a good selling point? Maybe it is a good selling point versus all other Scrypt coins, however most of those are crap and everyone knows it.
I think you mean network hash rate in the first sentence (I'll just assume thats what you mean)?
The problem with PoS coins is that these still arent a great way for distribution. Sure they alleviate the power issue, but you cant distribute these properly. IPO's are nice, for initial investors, and if you had a great marketing team you can get more people to buy, but its still a bad way to distribute. If the distribution can be solved, that coin will blow out LTC and BTC.
Yes, I was referring to the network hash rate.. I'm not sure why I said network speed.
I agree with you about the distribution of PoS coins sometimes being unfair, but honestly there are some PoS coins that are distributed more evenly than PoW coins. Furthermore, everyone has a chance to buy into the IPOs if they want.. it just depends on how risk adverse you are. I think it is unfair when people criticize coins like Nxt because of the initial distribution, since everyone had a chance to buy into the IPO.. it was posted on the forums for at least a month.
Furthermore, I feel like this same comparison can be made about Bitcoin or Litecoin. Those that weren't around 2-3 years ago might feel the same way about them being unfairly distributed to early adopters, but technically we can all agree that they had a fair release. I don't think it makes much sense to thwart innovation just to give more people time to buy into it, that will only set the crypto community back. I mean.. honestly with all the IPOs today, even if the Nxt IPO was still open today would you be risk prone enough to invest in it? I don't think many people would.. they see IPO and automatically call it a scam, however out of IPOs can come truly innovative ground breaking cyptos. I am really excited about some of the IPOs that are available today, and I don't think it's a good idea to write them all off.
Litecoin is not a back up to Bitcoin. If a huge flaw is found in Bitcoin and someone attacks it, Litecoin is likely to share that flaw. I always thought Litecoin would be a good backup if Bitcoin somehow was flawed because of it using a different algorithm. After learning more about this, I do not feel that is the case anymore. The encryption algorithm is the least likely place that a huge vulnerability will found. Cryptography is studied in academia much more so than Bitcoin’s source code, and the best and brightest are studying it... cryptography is no walk in the park. Short of quantum computing, which is unfeasible in the next 30 to 40 years, the encryption algorithm will not be the weak link. Furthermore, since Litecoin feels so apt to follow in Bitcoin’s steps, a huge percentage of the code base is shared by the two. If one goes down, the other is likely to follow. You may say… well if Bitcoin dies then all crypto currencies are doomed, but I am not so sure that is the case. Where other companies have failed, others have gone on to innovate and change the industry forever, even becoming bigger and better than their predecessors. Crypto currencies will certainly take a hit if Bitcoin dies, however it will not be the end of this movement I am certain of that.
I already stated that the code used is I think 2 versions behind in case there was a serious flaw. With the amount of talent in both coins I seriously doubt there is any issues however. But the added advantage is again all the devs work together to help both coins.
FYI quantum computing will be coming sooner than 30-40 years..........
And if BTC dies it may not kill the movement, but we will see a SERIOUS setback as a whole. To state otherwise is just ignorance.
Litecoin being 2 versions behind Bitcoin doesn't necessary mean that it is prone to vulnerabilities, as new vulnerabilities could be found in old code. Someone that knew a vulnerability in said code could attack Bitcoin and Litecoin at the same time- there would be no time for Litecoin to react. I heard a good example the other day of how back up systems are made for the auto pilot system in planes. There is the main system and then a back up system, both of which are designed and developed by two different companies using entirely different code base. This just makes since to me how this would be more robust than two versions of practically the same thing minus some changes here and there. This is why I don't see Litecoin as a good back up plan for Bitcoin- I myself see either Nxt or a CryptoNote coin as a more appropriate candidate (there are others, but this post is already very long and my fingers hurt!)
As to the Litecoin Association being a good reason to support Litecoin… are you kidding me? Have you seen all the drama and mess the Bitcoin Foundation has had going on... I’m sure everyone has. I would venture to say that at this point the Bitcoin Foundation is hurting Bitcoin more than it is supporting it. When people form centralized foundations for decentralized technologies, it goes against the original spirit of decentralization and crypto currencies for which Satoshi set precedent for. As to Litecoin having a better community than any other alternative crypto currency, I beg to differ. I never felt welcomed, and was often chastized for my opinions. Although Coblee was very nice when I met him at the Bitcoin 2013 conference, he literally ignored me after that. Even when I was pleading to the developers to comment on adding new features to Litecoin. Honestly, before Litecoin jumped up in price in November/December 2012, Coblee was nowhere to be seen in the Litecoin community. Once the price started to rise he suddenly showed up and started making an effort. I have no problem with that, but I couldn’t help but notice the coincidence. Anytime I tried to bring up controversial opinions or suggestions I was met with opposition mostly from early adopters. Furthermore, I feel like the Litecoin community is a big “click” and the really early adopters are much more likely to support each other on controversial matters than new users, and this is alarming considering Coblee is in this group. For instance, Coblee seemed genuinely excited and even encouraged me to make my physical Litecoins at the Bitcoin conference in 2013, even stating that he wanted one! He completely ignored me after this, only replying to one of my controversial posts when the ASIC debate was at its peak. I have seen him supporting Smoothie and his ventures, and even the new “Coinographic” guy, but he never once supported me publicly- only privately in conversation and then ignored forever. Again, this brings me back to there being a Litecoin “click” that is hard to get into… I couldn’t even after spilling blood, sweat, and tears for them.
This really hurts man and you know better. I as a main member of the Litecoin Association you know very well that we operate in a completely different atmosphere than the Bitcoin Foundation. The LA, unlike the TBF, are not associated with the developers. We are here to educate and help both LTC and cryptos as a whole. This can be shown by the MANY initiatives we are involved in from charities, to community projects, to marketing and public education. None of us are paid for our work at all. And we have raised thousands of dollars to help quite a number of people and organizations. The LA also hosts and pays for Litecointalk on top of that. We have raised funds for the development team as well, who in turn donated to the P2Pool developer which helps BTC and other coins that use the code.
As far as your business and interactions with Coblee, I can't really comment at all since for obvious reasons I wasn't involved in all of that.
I meant no offense to you, and I think it is great that you are working hard for a crypto that you believe in. If more people were like that in the crypto world, it would accelerate adoption exponentially. Unfortunately, in general people are lazy (not just in the crypto world) or have real life things that keep them busy.
I know you have good intentions with the Litecoin Association, but I assure you so did the Bitcoin Foundation (and probably still do.) The problem is tying real life identities to the face of crypto currencies is just another attack vector for the haters and naysayers (the anti-Bitcoin/Litecoin people). As we saw with Charlie Shrem's arrest, some headlines mistakenly read "CEO of Bitcoin arrested" or "Important Bitcoin person arrested", that reflect poorly on Bitcoin as a whole. It is sad because it really shouldn't, Charlies actions were those of his own. The same could be said about Mark Karpeles when Mt. Gox when down, as he was also a board member of the Bitcoin Foundation. This is my main grudge with forming foundations to represent and promote cryptos, because if they (or their members) are ever to do something wrong, then it will reflect on the crypto poorly. Maybe not inside the crypto community, but the media will have a field day with these sorts of things like they have in the past.
I suggest decentralizing the Litecoin Association, and using pseudonyms for representation.. like perhaps your forum names. That way if any of you are ever to run into trouble (shit happens), then your name in real life is less likely to be tied to the Litecoin Association or Litecoin.
Faster block times are no longer a good selling point, as there are other coins with faster block times that don’t have a huge problem with stales etcetera. Anywhere in between a minute and two and a half minute block time does not suffer from the things that Litecoin says will happen if they go any faster, at least not to the point where it is a huge problem. Everyone knows by now that Litecoin confirmations are less secure than Bitcoin confirmations. Furthermore, many Bitcoin payment processors process payments without any or as little as 1 confirmation, making some Bitcoin payments instant. I don’t see this as good as a feature I had originally thought, as many coins have come out that were faster and didn’t completely fail. Along this same line of thinking, the statement that Litecoin had a fair release… how is that even a feature? That is just default common sense for any developer developing a crypto currency if they want it to succeed. Not having a fair release is a sure way to death, as was learned with the alternative crypto currencies that came before Litecoin. Since Litecoin was released, I feel like there were numerous even more fair releases than Litecoin. So again, this argument lost its appeal to me.
Not really sure what the argument here is. You used the argument that we are a copy of BTC, now you are saying we are BTC with a few extra incentives (faster block times). So small innovations like this arent work mentioning and instead used as a argument AGAINST BTC?
The thing is that these weren't really innovations.. people had already made cryptos to do these things before. Litecoin just combined them into a pretty package.. the definition of innovation is subjective, but that is not innovation to me. The amount of code that needs to be edited to make those changes is quite small in comparison to the entire code base of Litecoin.
"Everyone knows by now that Litecoin confirmations are less secure than Bitcoin confirmations." --> This statement is pure bullshit and has no basis what so ever. I am not even sure where you came up with this. As a matter of fact, there was a coindesk article that stated a company has found a way to REVERSE BTC payments, which has a much lesser chance of succeeding with LTC.
Technically 1 Litecoin confirmation is 1/4 as secure as 1 Bitcoin confirmation, this is what I was alluding to. Six confirmations on the Bitcoin network are not equivalent to six confirmations on the Litecoin network, so Litecoin payments are usually confirmed after more confirmations on websites and services.
For those of you that think this may be FUD, I can tell you I currently do not have a balance above zero in any crypto currencies, and this is my non biased opinion of Litecoin and why I have stopped supporting it. Again, I must stress it was a hard decision as I have been supporting it for so long, and even got some of my friends and family invested. I am starting to regret that now, I am going to have to point them to this paper as I would feel horrible if they are left holding the bag. I can only really suggest Bitcoin at this point, anything else is really risky and it’s too early to tell who will rise to the top. I suggest putting a small percentage of your coins into projects you find interesting or innovative. It is going to take something truly innovative to supplant Bitcoin, and by coincidence Litecoin as well since they are content blindly following Bitcoin. I have a feeling this day will come sooner than we all think.
I dont really consider it FUD (except the LTC confirms you stated in the last part, I have no idea where you came up with that), but it is in no way unbiased. You claimed you were "shunned" by the community because some people didnt agree with you trying to get gimmicks incorporated into the Litecoin code base (which again would require a hard fork, which I again have addressed). And you have some sort of feud with smoothie, which im not touching with a 100 foot pole because thats between you and him.
All in all good post and I appreciate the time you put into this. But this is really nothing that I have not seen nor addressed before. I took extra time in addressing you because you put a tremendous amount of non-trolling effort into this.
As for your last few comments, you are really doing you family and friends a disservice by not getting them involved with LTC. The coin itself will increase in value BUT more importantly it can and will be used as an alternate form of currency to fiat, as Bitcoin is meant too.
I hope that some of my comments have made you have a change of heart. You know that I personally work very hard for LTC and cryptos, and this infighting of coins does NOTHING for all of us at all.
I guess we may end up agreeing to disagree, but thanks for the honest and thorough effort you put forth with this post. I love talking and thinking about cryptos, so this has been quite enjoyable to me to put my thought process down on paper.
Cheers
