Another thing regarding Litecoin specifically:

Yes, at one point Litecoin was focused on adoption quite a bit. And you would see lots of new places accepting LTC.

Imagine that Litecoin kept up with it's adoption efforts and had strong active development pushing forward by adapting useful technologies and creating infrastructure that made it easier to use than Bitcoin? It could have been much bigger than it ever was.

Imagine it was demonstrably easier to use than Bitcoin. People would have been recommending people start out with Litecoin. It's already faster. And in this situation you would probably have Bitcoin being the one doing the copying. What would that say about Litecoin, and how much credit would Litecoin gain from that? It could have happened. But it didn't and now it's time for others to try to make it happen.

I think there is a big difference in forcing adoption down peoples throats and giving them something that actually provides value. If you look at Bitcoin like you say, it's useful for some people right now, but there are still a lot of people for whom the use cases don't really line up. And the Bitcoin community doesn't seem particularly interested in improving on that. Some people are, sure. But for the most part a lot of people think Bitcoin is perfect the way it is. I agree with your points here.

I think if you create something that people actually want to use, there's not much 'marketing' that needs to be done. If it just works, then it sells itself. Give people an actual reason to use it.

You CAN use BTC to put gas in your car, true, but it's those intermediary services that take away the native benefits of BTC.  If I use a QORA card or a CoinFueled card, I'm not actually utilizing BTC's advantage of reduced transaction costs compared to credit card processing.  I can't go from BTC wallet-to-gas-tank, which would be ENORMOUS and powerful. 

It could be suggested that a trust based intermediary processor will be required in order to reduce transaction latency. When a third party is put in to the mix they handle instant transfers from account balance to account balance, and it opens the door to competing services with lower fees. If using blockchain only, there is the microtransaction problem, the safety problems of being under non trusted network control, and confirmation times to deal with. Imagine if putting gas in your car required a 6 hours confirmation because a block wasn't found quickly?

Perhaps worth discussion.


LOL, yes there is a bunch of reading to do, much has been written.

This should get you started: Generic Summary, Approach to Innovation, Marking (big read), Thread with links out to lots of information

Yes, you have done a very good job of concisely identifying one of the fundamental sets of choices with crypto in general.  The possibility exists that we could cut a LOT of fat out of the system by eliminating current fees.  I remember reading (and sorry, I can't source it) that the CEO of Overstock said that they save 8% when people use BTC.  Works fine for a purchase online, but the gas pump is a different world.  Six hours to confirm just doesn't work in that situation. 

Thanks for the link!  I have to guess that Bitmark might offer a solution?  I hope so! 

Cryptographic currency offers multiple benefits but also has limitations. For example we can store and manage our own money, send unlimited amounts to anybody without any barriers, and with minimal fees, often large transactions are faster than legacy systems. Conversely it is relatively clunky and slow for every day transactions, it cannot be sped up, and the interfaces for usage with legacy wide spread systems do not exist.

We have choices to make, do we try to come up with new things and replace what exists, or do we try hard to become part of what exists recognising that it is not an omnipotent solution to everything money related?

Within Bitmark we have named a concept micro-trust. The game provider Steam is a concrete example, we deposit funds through some methods then perform purchases instantly. Prepaid debit cards, credit cards, paypal, skrill, multiple services and many stores, giftcards and loadable credit, all of these things are examples of micro trust. The important thing to note is that we do not trust these services and companies with all of our money, only small amounts for whatever purpose we need. Micro trust for micro transactions.

We consider that the blockchain is great to store larger amounts, and to transfer funds between services. The latter point is where it can really shine.

To be usable however, for every transactions, we must become part of what exists. We will get nowhere fast if we try to get a Gas company, a gas franchise, or even a franchisee to accept our highly latent systems which require them to jump through hoops and change their infrastructure.

Back to your litmus test, consider a reloadable debit card that you could fill with daily use money from time to time quickly by depositing crypto. It's a simple solution enabled by the presence of just one service provider, made optimal by the presence of many.

As for fees, because crypto is entirely digital and isn't integrated in with heavy fee taking legacy systems, new lean startups can be created, or older companies can adopt and save money behind the scenes. 0.25% to an exchange for the conversion, and 0.75% on deposits to us to pay for the service, on currencies which change 10x that in a day and 100x that in a year, is a minor concession to make.

Where Bitmark and Marking come in, is that we enable the flow of money between people for the smallest of every day things, you can write a post or share something online and get reputation+money for it. Now imagine if the money you deposited to your daily use card, had been earned by two forum posts, a commit of some code, and a funny video shared on line? Does that not change the way money flows and the way we think of things quite a lot?

An additional point, is that we suggest crypto should be hidden through several layers of abstraction, if you can transfer money by clicking a button on a website, swap between services by linking accounts, and fill a debit card by hitting 'deposit' on-line or in an app, then why not? Blockchain and clients and daemons all still exist, they just become optional usage parts rather than required. It's perfectly feasible for people to only want to keep 25% of their weekly loose change in crypto and use it by clicking buttons, rather than 100% of their lifes savings stored in multi-secured extravagant cold storage.

None of this is exact or well defined or anything of the sort, but if you can follow the principles, and indeed agree it has some merit, then please do join in with ideas and discussion to make them reality.

Hmm, I don't have any proof other than just seeing it first hand since 2011.

CoinHorder here in the thread was a Litecoin supporter who's mentioned in his post how he advised against Litecoin focusing on adoption only and ignoring any technical advanced.

Litecoin's focus on adoption seems to have gradually faded once the market cap ballooned enough that people thought that was sufficient reason for Litecoin to continue.

If you see BTM as an investment and want to later sell it for BTC then maybe you should have bought more, and maybe you will come back in 1 year and say why didn't I buy more then too!

If you see marking as the future of money, then you probably have thousands or maybe even millions of marks, so you have enough marks to last you a life time already. Why worry? you can earn more just by doing things you enjoy and being marked.

I see it as this last thing, I have enough already, I can earn more. We even decided that the Bitmark Foundation could keep only 5000 as a reserve, to give to projects and charities in the future. It will be marked for the good work it does, so we don't need to raise funds any more.

Read both of the top posts here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=660544.1440 - it should be enough.

We really need to get users involved and the investments will then start to really pour in.