Almost everything claimed about litecoin is hype:
By whom? By me?
Please point to one thing I've ever said about Litecoin that is hype and not factual. I've said that Litecoin has 4x faster block times than Bitcoin, and this can be preferable to many users in many cases. I don't think that's false. I've also said Litecoin using a different algorithm can be beneficial if Bitcoin's breaks or vice versa. I also believe that is true, because once you have a large economy in motion it's very damaging for all transactions to suddenly need to halt. If there is only Bitcoin and nothing else then if Bitcoin ever fails for any reason, whether technical, or corruption, or whatever else, then it means severe global economic damage to all that use cryptocurrency (since there is only Bitcoin).
Scrypt is not GPU proof, as we've seen. It's not FPGA or ASIC proof either.
Again, when have I ever said Scrypt is GPU proof? For that matter please link directly to where anyone said that. They may have, but I'm not going to believe that simply because you said it.
What I think is more likely is you have a misunderstanding of why Scrypt was chosen for Litecoin.
Scrypt is designed to raise the
resource demands of the algorithm making the size and the cost of a hardware implementation much more expensive, and therefore limiting the amount of parallelism an attacker can use. Specifically, the algorithm is designed to use a large amount of memory. There is a significant trade off in speed in order to get rid of the large memory requirements. I'm paraphrasing here from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScryptSuch a trade off often exists in computer algorithms: you can increase speed at the cost of using more memory, or decrease memory requirements at the cost of performing more operations and taking longer.
The idea behind scrypt is to deliberately make this trade off costly in either direction.Ultimately this means mining litecoins is done with a different efficiency for GPUs, FPGAs and ASICS than mining bitcoins. This doesn't mean these systems
can't mine litecoins effectively. It only says they do so with a different efficiency, which is the point.
2.5 minute block times have very little effect in real use-cases.
That is your statement. Is it a fact? I don't think so. In fact, I know it's not, because I personally have experienced the beneficial effect of having LTC confirmed quicker as compared to BTC when I transacted LTC. Are you saying I wasn't a real use case?
It's only useful for depositing BTC at an e-wallet, by reducing the time it takes for the deposit to be considered confirmed.
Have you ever heard the expression time is money? Do you know where that comes from? It's because at any given time having access to money at one point can have a different value than having access to the same amount at some other point. For example BTC exchange rates fluctuate. Some cryptocurrency users trade coins daily trying to make a profit. If their coins can't be confirmed at some location before they have access to trade them when and where they want to it can cost them real money.
Shorter block times do NOT make Bitcoin-alts more secure.
Who said they did? Again, link to the problematic claims you cite.
They reduce the time it takes for transactions to reach the maximum level of network security, but reduce that maximum level by wasting more honest work on latency.
What do you mean "reduce the maximum level"? Are you suggesting there is some cap for the total computing resources Litecoin can use?
It's a trade-off between securing transactions more quickly and making a blockchain more secure from >50% attacks.
No it's not. A block chain, any block chain, is
only as secure from 51% attacks as the amount of resources it takes on average to outperform the honest network. That's true of Bitcoin and all proof of work only block chains. All of Litecoins 2.5 minute blocks now are far more secure than Bitcoin's blocks when it was only Satoshi and a few others (like
Hal Finney) mining Bitcoin. Also note that combined proof of work and proof of stake coins like Novacoin (which I also support) add another dimension to the 51% attack issue.
I personally think a shorter block time is in fact a slight protocol improvement, ...
Well which is it? Above you said 2.5 minute block times have very little effect in real use-cases.
... but I don't think an alternative network with this feature makes up for the advantage Bitcoin has in the size of its network of users/nodes, its hashrate and the amount of supporting services/software it has,...
I'm not sure if you're aware that amount of users/nodes, hashrate, and amount of supporting services/software for any block chain including Bitcoin can change. Again, when it was only Satoshi and Hal Finney mining Bitcoin in 2009 how much of the above support did it have?
... and claims suggesting otherwise are pure hype by miners looking to make money on their low-demand coins.
Here again you're saying a lot about claims made but linking to nothing. I'll be more inclined to think you have a legitimate gripe about hype if you can link to something.
I also don't think it makes sense to start a new blockchain that resets everyone's currency holdings to zero every time a minor protocol improvement comes along. It's better to upgrade the Bitcoin protocol over time in my opinion.
I don't believe a reset of everyone's wealth to zero for protocol changes is wise or welcome either. I believe in upgrading Bitcoin's protocol when possible too.
I strongly disagree. Litecoin is near copy of Bitcoin, and is less useful than it in almost every use-case.
Is that a fact or your opinion? I mean the part about being less useful in almost every use case? I believe it's only your opinion.
You're defining the market as anything you and litecoin miners want.
No I'm not. I understand a market has differences of opinion. That's why I'm spending significant time in this written exchange with you. It's also the reason there are buy versus sell actions on exchanges.
Since I, and others who don't want Bitcoin-based networks to fragment, are also part of the market, you can't accurately say that the market 'wishes' for MtGox to add litecoin and other Bitcoin-alts.
It's true I can't say that for the entire market, but I didn't. Like I said above people within a market can (and will) have differences of opinion. However, market pressure will usually result in some action or another. I'm saying market pressure can be the reason Litecoin will be more of a success than it is already.
You're dwelling on a technicality that is completely irrelevant to my point, which is that Bitcoin users and investors are hurt by the adoption of nearly identical networks that add new coins that can be used in similar roles as bitcoins.
Not if those investors also hold the other coins.
A bitcoin is an arbitrary unit.
No it's not. If you think it is then sell me a bitcoin for $1.00.
In any case, what's important is that the adoption of near copies of Bitcoin leads to a rapid rate of inflation in the Bitcoin-based cryptocurrency money supply. I think that's bad.
Creation of alt-coins doesn't automatically mean adoption of them. Have you any idea how many alt-coins there are now? More than you can count on two hands.
I think either Bitcoin will remain the dominant cryptocurrency, or we will see increasing fragmentation and inflation of BTC-based cryptocurrency.
I had similar thinking at first. I didn't always support Litecoin. When it was announced I probably felt a bit like you do now towards it, as an unnecessary entrant to the scene. I later came to believe an ecosystem with
only Bitcoin is the real danger. There is too much that can go wrong. Everything would have to go perfectly, and history has shown that usually isn't the case when it comes to Bitcoin.
I don't think it's likely that Bitcoin will only have one competing parallel network, and no more after that. In other words, it's either a universal money protocol known as BTC or it's a steadily increasing number of incompatible protocols.
Again, there is
already far more than Bitcoin on the scene. What you don't seem to appreciate is that the majority of them
don't have traction. Can't you see things
appear to be progressing more closely to what I predict than you do?
I disagree with your assessment of this being the best way to plan against the corruption of Bitcoin. I explained my opinion on what is a much better way to create a Bitcoin-alt:
fork the blockchain with all of the transaction data that exists up to some point in time, so the new blockchain doesn't dilute the currency holdings of all Bitcoin users.
How in the world do you decide which point in time is the right one to invalidate transactions? You're saying a much better way to create a Bitcoin alternative is an intentionally disastrous hard economic fork?
This way, if you had 50 BTC in the original network, you would have 50 BTC in the new network too.
Not if you received those 50 BTC for a payment
after the fork cut off for valid transactions.
Perhaps the market agrees with them and it will overrule you.
That can happen too. In fact I said the market was bigger than myself and my detractors too in the thread where I first proposed supporting Litecoin as a solution to the Bitcoin foundation.
I disagree. I think almost all of the code and concepts used in BTC-based cryptocurrency are 'Bitcoin technology', since it came from Bitcoin, and the many developers who contributed to the BTC network (and were renumerated in BTC for their work).
I didn't say the code wasn't 'Bitcoin technology'. I said all code doesn't
belong only to something called Bitcoin. If you think it does you need to become familiar with what open source means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
] average is latency loss significant enough to counterbalance the effect above? Source/numbers? 
