Topic: What's the purpose for other alternate cryptocurrecies? (Read 1768 times)

well obviously the analogy isn't perfect, but I am just using it to refute those who claim ltc is redundant or worthless due to bitcoin already existing.

true story: back many years ago now (sometime around 1996-1997 maybe, i dont know exactly) I walked into my school computer room, sat at a computer and saw a minimalistic white page with only a search bar on it that someone had left on IE. I thought wtf is this? Rather than going to yahoo like normal I typed something in and used it. Immediately I thought 'wow this is easier to use than yahoo'. From then on I only ever used google.

Looking back with 20/20 vision google is now a giant, however at that time in 1996 anyone could have said to google investors: hey you are wasting your time with this nonsense, google is redundant. There are already services that do the same thing (yahoo etc). I don't care if its a bit faster (ltc parallel: faster confirms), cleaner webpage, different search algorithm (ltc parallel: scrypt instead of sha) those are not 'significant' enough differences from yahoo. GTFO this will just be a pump and dump.

When I first used ltc I got the same feeling.. its just easier and more comfortable to use. Now I don't know if ltc will ever take off- its a real punt lets face it, but the potential is there and there is a long shot none zero chance of extreme success. It should not be ignored just because it is 'too similar' to bitcoin.

Regulating cryptocurrency will have inverse effect, just like on drugs.
Price will start skyrocketing and people can still get drugs now by whatever means necessary.

If they start regulating one cryptocurrency, there's no reason why they wouldn't regulate all of them in the process... the only way to go is to make sure cryptocurrencies remain unregulatable...

Bitcoins will likely be the first of the blockchains to get hit with all kinds of rules and regulations, because it keeps trying to be "real money" and if it succeeds in becoming that, it will suddenly suffer all kinds of horrible disadvantages due to various rules and regulations applying in various jurisdictions.

Blockchain based tokens that are NOT "real money" have real usefulness because people can play all kinds of fun games with them without having entire in-game economies attacked by and possibly crippled by rules and regulations from the planet known as Earth, a planet which all or most of the population of the game considers to be a totally fictional planet and even if by some weird quirk of fate it did turn out not to be fictional certainly to have no jurisdiction over them.

-MarkM-

Google provided better results and an enjoyable place for people who like being spied on by Big Brother. LTC doesn't provide such kinds of improvement over BTC: all that can be done with LTC can be done with BTC too... apart for pumping and dumping, of course... All I see is those who mined a big stash during the few first days trying to boost the value of their investment... A bit like SolidCoin, actually (and we see where it is now).

yea just like google was for people who missed the yahoo early investment window and wanted to try to get rich becoming an early investor of a useless search engine..

Different uses for different needs. It's not because a market is still in development that the use doesn't exist. Bitcoin was still "useless" a couple of years ago, and people found some interesting way to use it. It's hard to say for a specific cryptocurrency, but it gives another method to create a virtual currency.

Overall, I think it proves the concept of cryptocurrency that different people tries to create new version of it. Seeing that Litecoin and Namecoin are going relatively well show that the model behind Bitcoin work and is not simply a one-hit wonder. There's still a LOT of work to do, but I'm pretty confident we're going to see more uses for cryptocurrency.

It may be a slower transition that you might think. This is all dependent on how fast BFL delivers preorders.

Non-ASIC will need something to mine in the near future. 

so you have a reason to persuade other people give his Bitcoin to you.

Just look at LTC and the huge pump and dump last week with 43K BTC buy wall manipulation.

Disgusting ...

Yup. It's for people who missed BTC's early adoption window and who want to try to get rich by becoming early adopter of a useless altcoin...

Instead of focussing on the minting of coins, try focussing on just processing transactions. The main reason so many merged-mined chains, and even chains that are not merged-mined, are so low in value is that it is hard to "back" millions of coins minted by third parties.

Miners are so "spoiled" by all the "free money" that it is hard for a "backed" chain to get enough transaction volume to attract miners. Thus most of them have moved to Open Transactions for now, hoping to eventually move back to a blockchain format once they have enough transactions going on that transaction fees will suffice to pay the relatively low cost of adding yet another chain to a merged mining operation.

-MarkM-

Depends.
For a person who launches an altcoin the purpose is to pick up easy money with premine. For miners it's to pick up easy money while prices are high. For traders it's to pick up easy money while there is demand on new coins.
If u r asking what the purpose from God/Universe/Mankind point of view... There is no purpose. It's just a toy (including Bitcoin) and it'll be replace by a better toy when the time comes.

Pump and dump !

Well, thanks for the answers!

Other than testing different ideas, none really. They're somewhat useful to see what will happen to bitcoin down the track. For example, geistgeld is pushing the memory limits with its large blockchain. i0coin is also getting up there. i0coin also shows that the code to halve coin subsidies works since it hit that a while back.

Merge mining seems like a great idea for non-currency blockchains to give them security. Unfortunately there aren't any. Namecoin comes closest but people still use it as a currency. For currency based blockchains it seems to make that currency pretty much worthless.

Maybe a currency could be done that merge mines up to block X to seed the coins widely, then at X it switches off merge mining and uses a different proof of work (like litecoin) from then on. The 'goldrush' during the merge mining phase might be fun to watch.

I never was a fan of merged mining. Yes security is the big reason why.

I call it inflation of cryptocurrencies. Freely produced as a byproduct of producing say bitcoins...

I found the ones that can be merged-mined useful for testing mergedmining. I learned for example that the extremely short block time of GeistGeld was bad for merged mining along with all the other coins, so I had to drop GeistGeld from my merged-mining mix.

It would be handy to have more coins to try adding to the mix, however I expect that if they try to use block time as short as GeistGeld's they will prove unsuitable.

DeVCoin has been very useful for financing free open source stuff, which is its purpose.

I0coin has had problems, maybe once we get to the root of them there will be something to learn from them.

-MarkM-