Topic: what should I do, I invested a lot - page 3. (Read 12515 times)

Oh come on, that's like saying rich people have a monopoly over Ferraris and Lamborghinis.  It's pretty obvious that people with more money can buy more.  It doesn't matter if it's ASICs, GPUs, FPGAs, CPUs, etc.  You seem to be butchering the term 'monopoly.'

The reason I posted the original Litecoin announcement thread is to show you exactly why the devs created Litecoin.  Again, it has nothing to do with being ASIC resistant.  You made that up.

Again:
- The devs clearly state it was intended to be similar to BTC, and to be to BTC what silver is to gold.
- No ASICs were in development at that time, so ASIC resistance was a total non-issue.
- Again, claiming LTC was designed to be ASIC resistant simply because it utilizes a different mining algorithm is very stupid, because that's equating ASIC resistance to the current lack of ASIC technology suited for that specific purpose.  Quit making things up.
- By your logic, you might as well say LTC was supposed to be GPU resistant because there was no GPU scrypt miner at the time.  See how absurd this idea is?

the money prevent me, this mean it monopolized, it's like saying that microsoft don't have the monopoly on OS unit sold, because you can sell more if you had more money to make a company bigger than them

Nothing stops a malicious entity to have big DCs rooms filled with PCs and FPGAs, but if a coin is mined only on commodity hardware the whole world can fire back just by plugging in hardware readily available everywhere. With ASICs you could very well have a global entity like Intel or AMD having exclusive access to mining technology which could effectively squeeze out the rest of the market.

Anyhow I do agree that ASIC resistance is probably a pipe dream, I also agree that ASICs have their positive side in terms of total hash rate and thus network security. I guess the crypto-currency scene will just have to handle the mining ecosystem as it is and that the market *might* adjust itself by having the right incentives (a single entity monopolizing hashrate will probably just kill the investment they did to reach a majority of the network by casting a shadow on BTCs security).


The value proposals of LTC, compared to BTC:

• confirmation time: x4 faster
• monetary base: x4
• hashing algorithm: Scrypt instead of SHA-256

I guess we all agree that the increase in monetary base and the decrease on confirmation times are superficial changes that have a negligible effect on usability. Being it "silver" to Bitcoin's "gold" is just a pretty stupid and empty marketing claim. The "real thing" is supposed to be the different hashing algorithm. It's very well documented that when and if SHA-256 is broken Bitcoin would be able to quickly switch hashing algorithm, so LTC being "a failsafe" sounds pretty pointless... But there you have the problems of ASICs - yep, you can change hashing algorithm very quickly, but then you would render the whole mining infrastructure unusable because its composed by machines that can ONLY mine SHA-256, which in case of algorithm switching would pose a huge problem because the security of the network would be jeopardized. That's why the only real point of LTC was supposed to be ASIC resistance, which nevertheless was never taken seriously by anybody with an average understanding of crypto.

LTC just has the very same fundamental characteristics of Bitcoin (both positive and negative aspects), I do appreciate it as a necessary experiment, but now it's just become a useless clone.

Disclaimer: I do hold LTC bought in Februrary 2013, but I will probably unload them during the next BTC run-up, just because during a maniac market LTC will probably appreciate slightly against BTC because some noobs will prefer to buy into LTC "because its cheaper".

Just hold and don't check the price everyday.

It will just distract you from short term fluctuation and create unnecessary doubt.

This is wrong on so many levels. What stops people to have big DCs rooms filled with PCs and FPGAs? Absolutely nothing. Maybe the lack of money, but it's still doable. And while you seem to have a decentralize mining you lose a lot more on security because the network is very vulnerable when the total power is low.


What customer protection? People are bashing and hating the BitLicense every day!

What if Bitfinex turn gox?

Is there any protection for customer who put money on bitfinex?

I'm pretty sure that when LTC was first released there was no GPU miner at the time.  I was around then, so I *should* know, especially since I was CPU mining LTC at the time, but specific details of everything else are a bit fuzzy.  Sorry.  BTC-bug bit me.

The dev team started off fantastically and so did the community.  Somewhere along the line when other alt-coins hit and gained traction, LTC began to lose some ground.

I still don't believe that the whole point of LTC is ASIC resistance.  Here's the original Litecoin announcement thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-litecoin-a-lite-version-of-bitcoin-launched-47417

Basically, it states it wanted to be Bitcoin what silver is to gold, a "real alternative currency similar to Bitcoin."  By the way, there were definitely no Bitcoin ASICs in 2011.

Here's my advice.

Go ask your bank for a loan. Then open as many accounts as possible at various banks, and arrange as big an overdraft as they are willing to give you. Apply for as many credit cards as possible. Basically, borrow as much money as you possibly can. Then open an account with Bitfinex, and put all the money up as margin for a leveraged long position. Hopefully the price will go up and you'll make lots of money.

You're welcome.


Disclaimer: please don't actually do this.

There was a proposal to hard fork LTC in order to move it to X11 algo, which is ASIC-resistant at the moment. However the community denied the proposal and it never happened.

https://bitcointa.lk/threads/ann-litecoin-ltc-x11-hardfork-at-block-564-480.291272/

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/unofficial-ann-litecoin-ltc-to-x11-algorithm-hardfork-549572

The whole point of LTC is "ASIC resistance". Someone invented the LTC and instantly get huge support from miners because profit for bitcoin was switching from GPU miner to ASIC manufacture.

The development team did a half ass job when it come to infrastructure and marketing. There is no public wallet service for LTC I know of and there are few merchants accept LTC for payment.

The coin will probably fade away unless someone step in to build better infra or do better marketing.

Is that really true?  LTC's primary purpose was to be ASIC resistant?  How the heck did I miss that?  I really find that hard to believe since it's a far stretch of the imagination to call something "ASIC resistant" just because an ASIC hasn't been fabricated for that purpose yet.  It seems *very* shortsighted (unless you're an LTC dev and wanted to make a quick buck).

I was under the impression that LTC, aside from making some superficial changes to the total supply and confirmation times, was intended to  be more of a BTC failsafe, i.e. if one network fails then we have another.  I didn't realize ASIC resistance was even a consideration, but I did assume that the fact that people could still reasonably use CPUs to mine LTC when it was introduced was one of the reasons scrypt was chosen as the mining algorithm.

LTC was built in order to be an "ASIC resistant" coin. This is important because a coin that can be mined on commodity hardware (CPUs, GPUs and even FPGAs) is inherently more resistant to centralization.

In any case "ASIC resistant" seems a very difficult goal (if possible at all) to achieve, and it was clear that Scrypt was not "ASIC resitant" at all. The Litecoin value proposal has always been dubious, despite of it being an interesting (and probably necessary) experiment.

Now that Scrypt ASIC are in the wild and that its been proven that being x4 faster and having a x4 monetary base compared to BTC has a negligible impact on usability it becomes clear that there is nothing significant that LTC can offer us.

The LTC/USD value will likely just piggyback the Bitcoin value. The LTC/BTC value might grow at some point, but just because at this stage an incredibly big part of the market doesn't really understand crypto and acts in an extremely irrational way.

I don't believe that you understand how mining works.  There's nothing about any mining algorithm whether it's scrypt, SHA-256, x11, etc. that implicitly says anything about monopolies or centralization.  There's also nothing about ASICs that say anything about this, either.

When I say that Bitcoin has a monopoly over SHA-256, I simply mean that it is by several orders of magnitude a more popular coin to mine than any other SHA-256 coin.  I'm not talking about some group controlling or monopolizing a coin itself.   This is the inevitable result of competition.

As far as ASICs go, of course you could have a millionaire or billionaire or a large corporation/government spend tons of money on new ASIC mining equipment to try to gain a majority share of network power, but the same is true for any other mining algorithm for which ASICs have not yet been developed.  The only difference is that ASICs are simply more efficient and less wasteful of energy and resources, and so this is purely a benefit to the network in that you get more network security per dollar invested. 

Again, LTC being a scrypt coin and capable of being mined by scrypt ASICs in and of itself has nothing to do with monopolization or centralization.

Write the money off, all of it. Every time you buy anything thats what you should do.

Once you have done that you will be able to see clearly again. You will see that right now you have some bitcoin. It's up to you to decide how you feel about that bitcoin, but fixating on purchase price will only ever cloud your judgement.

The market price is what people are prepared to pay you *right now* for your bitcoin, if you think they are worth less than market price then sell, if you think they are worth more than market price you should buy more!

Market price is quite often the worst indicator of how much something is worth.

I think if you wait 1 year the bitcoin price will be 1200$ per btc

No hashrate of any coin is monopolized. There is no law preventing you or anyone else from inventing a newer, faster ASIC.

you said it, scrypt make it monopolized and centralized, how is that good by any mean? if scrypt were not so damn fast in reaching a better hash they could have been good to be honest, but right now they are bad very bad, they are a run for who has more money

That's a seemingly fair assessment.  The only consideration to remember is the historics you've pointed out surround true commodities, ones that people know and understand.  Bitcoin is a little different in that regard, but I'll conceed that for the ETF participants it may not matter what exactly backs the ETF, as long as they can profitably trade it.

I think many of us expect market manipulation when the usual market manipulators get involved.    I also think ETFs have been responsible for bubbles (and crashes) in the past in other commodities markets (like platinum for example), so it's not unreasonable to expect the same when it comes to Bitcoin.  The ETF is supposed to track the commodity, but the reverse ends up happening.