Bitcoin Forum

Well? Let's hear it.

Well, because bitcoin is a thing that earlier than litecoin and its media coverage is greater than litecoin. At least my family which don't involved in bitcoin know about bitcoin in news, while litecoin isn't even mentioned in news... Also SHA-256 hashing is easier than scrypt hashing, so it is more popular...

More appropriate block times. Bitcoin has a 10 minute target block time verses litecoin's 2.5 minute target block time. This results in much fewer orphaned blocks which makes mining (read: securing the network) a much more predictable endeavor and profitability can be more easily predicted.

Other then that they are very similar, and from a technical point of view they are close to exactly the same with the exception of Bitcoin using SHA-256 verses litecoin's script. However with the advent of scrypt's ASICs being manufactured there is little effective difference between the two from a high level point of view.

Litecoin is actually a fork of Bitcoin 

i want to add the important thing that whenever you think of cryptocurrency you thick about bitcoin sinceit was the first one and the most popular one.
litecoin is considered and alternative.
bitcoin has dedicated developers.
bitcoin has more usage than litecoin.
...

now i ask you why do you ask this question? do you think the opposite is true?

Bitcoin has an active group of core developers and active community; from what I gather, this is less and less the case with Litecoin. It seems its community and developers are moving on to other projects. That's a big reason right there.

It's too much like its parent--Bitcoin--to really differentiate itself in any real meaningful way. It's like the second wave of early adopters wanted to have its own moment of a first-mover advantage.

Bitcoin is supported by a larger group of people. The more people working on the project and running nodes makes it a strong decentralized system.
Also litecoin doesn't have any real-world adoption. It's been hard enough to get people to accept bitcoin, litecoin would have a lot of catching up to do.

I used to have most of my crypto net wealth in the form of Litecoins in 2012 and 2013. But then, the number of websites which accepted Litecoins declined, as many of the prominent websites closed down (Atlantis was a very good market site which accepted LTC, and there were a few more sites).  And after I lost quite a lot of coins when LTC-Global closed down, I decided against keeping my wealth in Litecoins.

That is kind of like asking how is Apple better than iPhone, or how is Nike better than Jordans.
Litecoin was built off Bitcoin.

the real question is how litecoin is better than bitcoin, not the opposite, remember that Bitcoin is not an altcoin, and all the others are pure clone

but i could go ahead and say

supply limit too high

scrypt algo need heavy memory, it is more expensive to build asic for it, so it could lead to centralization, if only few company can afford it

more orphaned block because of the faster confirmation and so on

bitcoin is the prototype of crypto currency, and litecoin is just a copycat, there were so many copycats, and ltc is the best copycats, or nobody remembers it, actually I think dogecoin is better than litecoin although DOGE is copycat too cos faster block time, so btc is best. 10 minutes block time is slow, but it is the first crypto coin.

More liquidity.  During this pump the price of ltc is fluctuating by 10% daily.  You can move the market with only a couple hundred grand.  Those days are over for bitcoin.

Bitcoin is more popular and its ecosystem is more robust.

The usage of bitcoin is more mainstream than litecoin. And the first thing that people asking 'Do you know bitcoin?' People never ask 'Do you know

litecoin?' That is the different between them, bitcoin word is more popular to the ear of people rather than litecoin that will make bitcoin better than

litecoin

Litecoin should be Embraced by all Bitcoiners to some degree, imagine the unthinkable if Bitcoin took some bizarre development direction that wasn't in its best interest in the future and there was no place else to turn except fiat.  ::)

I've always seen Bitcoin being the big brother of litecoin I think it should look after it a bit more rather than picking on it. We don't want the top spot we want a successful btc.  :D

in my view Litecoin has value because it is the second biggest blockchain and it is also a backup for bitcoin. you can also try some new stuff with Litecoin which would be too risky for bitcoin for example. in the end both are like brothers (Litecoin is the little one) . so i would keep some Litecoin just in case  ;)

Bitcoin gold
Litecoin silver

How is it better? Easy, network effect.

Literally almost every altcoin out there is technically superior to Bitcoin but that is immaterial. Any cryptocurrencie's value stems from it being used and the confidence in it, and nothing comes close to Bitcoin.

If you want my opinion which you may totally disagree with , the Original idea was Bitcoin basically and Bitcoin is a Open-source code project , so basically everyone is copying it's not just Litecoin , it's about all the other Cryptoo currencies , they are all cheap low copies and Bitcoin is Core , it's that simple to me .

Litecoin is just a largely useless alt and people only have it as it's seen as somewhat of a second best to bitcoin. Bitcoin is better and far superior because it just has adoption behind it (both by users and merchants). I mean, what can I actually buy with bitcoin? And yiou rarely see stores announcing that they're now accepting Litcoin, it's always bitcoin.

okay...  ::) ....  ;D

Whoops fixed. At least someone is reading my posts hehe (I think I just have bitcoin on my mind).

Why Litecoin better than bitcoin ???
BIg market, number 1 marketcap cryptocoin, Biggest Comunity, Biggest fans
accepting in most place , and the future of money



bitcoin é uma árvore que vai continuar a crescer

Bitcoin is better than any other altcoin in many ways and in all ways, Bitcoin is supported by large community bigger adoption around the globe, huge merchants on the list because Bitcoin is the real innovation the first and only one crypto currency that has bright future ahead to secure the future and easy way to enjoy the early retire life. ;)

Bitcoin is number one no doubt but the bold part is the biggest load of bs i've read today.

Mother of CryptoCurrency is Bitcoin, is invincible. The biggest community, The biggest marketplace, and another cryptocurrency is referenced by Bitcoin, i means example: for the price, most all atlcoin on the exchanger is paired with BTC, including Litecoin.


~iki

Bitcoin Vs Litecoin

Bitcoin has huge supporter & the market is huge

Litecoin has less supporter & the market is small

It still baffles me how high on the crypto list litecoin is, why? Just cause it was early and everyone is stuck with their hundreds of radeons?

Because of it's market and it's support and the early release was one of the reason for it's market and support like Bitcoin.

as long as exchanges generate decent enough volume from litecoin, it will get support. and it does generate good volume, especially considering it is an altcoin.

More people want and use BTC. The technical differences don't matter. If more people wanted a crypto mined by farting then that would be the king.

If you look at exchange volumes it's clear LTC has a role to play for many and its perceived dullness makes it that much more attractive as a hedge or trading pair. There's no tech wank, dodgy IPO, repeat scammer developers or outrageous instamine. It's just a coin that plods along and works.

That is a weird comparison. Both Bitcoin and Litecoin are cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin will have much more computing power associated with it, when compared with any alt. This makes the Bitcoin network more secure.

Litecoin was supposedly GPU resistant. Got broken. ASIC resistant? Got broken again.
The main reason why it is considered better is because the confirmation time which is 2.5minutes and possibly the increased cap on coins. I don't see it as being better though. Faster confirmation means more orphans and lesser security compared to Bitcoin's one confirmation.

I like both coins, I am not sure if, in a technological sense, one is better than the other. However, I would much rather use Bitcoin, because many more places accept Bitcoin, while very little accept Litecoin.

Bitcoin and Litecoin have more or less the same algorithm, so technically they are the same.

But Bitcoin came first, and with all its infrastructure.

And in my opinion Litecoin's devs are not the most active and enthusiastics in the world, while Bitcoin's devs are active.

They are completely different. Bitcoin's mining algorithm is SHA256d while litecoin is scrypt

Both are the Wheel. One was invented first.

Litecoin's existence-justifying premise - that bitcoin is "bad for environment" and litecoin is "lighter" is fallacious.

Litecoin has no reason to exist.

For the end user that don't want to mine and don't want to know technical stuff they are more or less the same, that's what I meant.

people will only lose tons of money if something really bad will happen to bitcoin, and i don't think that those same people will restart again with a clone of it, they will see every new crypto as good as dead, another reason why a better bitcoin cannot come up

The question isn't clear. A lot of people are saying "Bitcoin" when they mean "XTcoin."

Bitcoin is better than Litecoin because Bitcoin is older, more stable, and easier to run behind Tor.

Litecoin is better than XTcoin because Litecoin is older, more stable, and easier to run behind Tor.


Yes. "if" ...


We're close to finding out.

*sigh*
This is why governments and executives at large companies have discussions in private. This is how decisions are made is by having an open transparent discussion about the options. Some people can't have a disagreement in a civil manner. All this toxicity and FUD in the bitcoin community lately is going to send these discussions behind closed doors. All this hoopla over gavincoin or XTcoin like there is some diabolical scheme to kill or control bitcoin is ridiculous.

All I care ATM is how s LTC price going to behave once LTC hits block halving. It s going to be an excellent exercise on how BTC price s going to behave once BTC reaches the same point next year.

The only thing that is important is whether or not people use it and businesses accept it.  Hardly anyone takes bitcoins, and practically no one takes litecoins.  Bitcoins are more well known, are more widely accepted by merchants, and more widely known by most people.  Other features like block time are irrelevant.  Bitcoin wins.

Beside the technical reasons, the fact that we have the smartest devs out there and the fact we have the strongest network effect on the planet, are enough reasons to consider Bitcoin not only better than Litecoin but better than any other cryptocoin, and the network effect is basically 50% of what makes a coin a good coin.

I don't think this is the right analogy. Bitcoin didn't create Litecoin. Litecoin isn't a model under the brand that is Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is to Litecoin as Gold is to Silver, there essentially the same thing however one is valued higher than the other, one is more popular, more sought after than the other. There are some foundational differences but essentially they're two versions of the same thing. E.g., Nike Air Jordan's to Reebok Pumps.

One thing I'm not hearing from this thread, and would love to, is what are actual differences between the two coins. Is the mathematical work to create the coins different? Is there a different size of mined blocks? Is their something different to the infrastructure. Most of the comments I'm seeing so far are differences to the impact of both coins on the community, symptoms rather than real causes.

lol, exactly.  When the fork happens it will be interesting to see the die hards make a stand and lose all of their coins until they realize that no one cares and then they will have to update too.

I think that ltc or btc isn't better, but if something happens to btc (like the fud people win, I have no idea why they want to destroy btc) then ltc is almost the same thing, it is well known and trusted, and it can step up to replace bitcoins if needed.  Otherwise since more people want to use bitcoins I guess that is the better one but it is good to have an alternative.

Well, bitcoin is more widely accepted and actively developed, so it's obviously better since it's got more support and a larger community using it.

since its creation first bitcoin, and it can be said that bitcoin is the center of all altcoin, because if there was no BTC then there will never be altcoin

That doesnt mean that bitcoin is better than litecoin. Being a later coin, improvements could have been implemented. For instance, number of transactions and blocksize can be adressed..

A better question: why is litecoin better than monero?

Same reason as why bitcoin is better than litecoin. Litecoin is older than Monero, while some people not involved in crypto know litecoin, while not monero. (If you wanted to start a discussion about this, please start this in Altcoin boards.)

I honestly thought LTC would be dead by now, seriously what does it offer to the marketplace?

I think Bitcoin was supported by a larger group of comunity, and there are people working on it. and litecoin was created for support bitcoin its like mother and son

Scrypt mining, and LTC itself were an idea of anti-asic coin sold out to people, but time proved that they were just buying a cat in the bag, it's lucky for them tho, that
bitcoin turned into hype, and pushed every sh*tcoin with it, including LTC.
To me and many others it will never be anything but a bad joke.

cheers

i am exactly waiting to see the future behavior of LTC price, especially at the time of its block reward halving. and that is all i care about to know about Litecoin, just about how much money it can make for me.
but to compare the two behaviors of btc an ltc at their block halving, meh, i don't know if it is going to be the same although they most probably going to go up.

 How is bitcoin better than litecoin, well you decide. I am giving you either one bitcoin or one litecoin which one do you take? :o

The infrastructure is a lot better for bitcoin.

How do BTC and LTC differ from all other alt cryptocoins?

Will the fork ultimately apply to the alt currencies once the mining gets far enough along?

isn't dash better than monero, they shares the same thing, but dash is a more suited name for a coin than monero can even dream about

monero problem is its name really nothing else

and litecoin isn't better than monero, people are more attached to it for emotional reasons...

Bitcoin has more stabilize price and is supported by larger community. But i think LTC is an alternative coin, so it's maybe hard to tell about who is better because LTC is only an alternative coin.

Bitcoin isn't particularly better - people will argue on the technical side of block times etc. but those have their own pros and cons. The main reason why Bitcoin is considered to be superior is simply that it has far more infrastructure supporting it - and both merchants and consumers who actually use it. With things like Coinbase and Bitpay - you can actually use your coins to buy things whereas with LTC - you really can't - you'd have to convert it back to fiat and then spend that. This really all comes from the larger userbase that came with being the first of its kind, as well as the media attention from the past.

monero is "money" or "cash" in Esperanto.
dash is short for "digital cash"

Which is better? I'd choose "monero" over "digital cash"

still i think it is better to use english name, for a wider acceptance, this is my problem with it

dash is accepted already more than monero, this should tell you something

Its maybe not better in the functions, but it will be better at anytime for the rest of cryptocoins.
Because its the first coin!

It will be hard for every other coin approximately come to this point that bitcoin come until yet.
When you look closely, every other coin is only a copy of this cryptocurrency.

There are quite a few coins with unique blockchains now that differ greatly on many levels. The only problem is that many are caught up in demonstrating their techno weenie cleverness rather than attempting to market them.

I would rather want to know how is litecoin better than bitcoin?
Litecoin is just another litecoin, no different than Dash, kitty, shitty, titty, hobo ... or what ever they call them. All just copies of the one and only bitcoin. All of them will eventually die and be forgotten.

Monero is “coin”, not “cash”, in Esperanto.

Uhm, that is simply not true. The technology behind monero is new and based on cryptonote, including a baseline anonymity feature. For example, you can't even know who has the most coins, or create a "rich-list". Moneros blockchain is not parsable.

 Bitcoin hasn't merged with a fucking joke/meme coin.Any credibility LTC had evaporated with that decision.
 I sent all my LTC to the exchanges and have been arbing them ever since they merged.I will never keep LTC again.
  I'm only keeping Bitcoin from now on.All the rest of the shit coins are just a way for me to get more BTC by flipping them,repeatedly.

Fair point.  Merged mined was the wrong words to use.
  I should have written " Bitcoin hasn't become associated in my mind with a fucking joke/meme coin. IMHO"
 ;D

Bitcoin is better than litecoin, because the marketcap is larger, and no other crypto currency will ever come close....well maybe XRP, that will take 4-5 years before that possibility can come true.

well the answer is very simple
bitcoin is more popular and more established

That's a weak argument. That's like saying fiat is better than bitcoin because the marketcap is larger, and no ever currency will ever come close... well maybe CNY, that will take 4-5 years before that possibility can come true.

the popularity that bitcoin has, litecoin will never have.
the number of people who have invested and will invest in bitcoin is going to always bigger.
there is much more places that one can spend his bitcoins, and that is not true about litecoin.

it is like comparing USD with a third world's currency and say why USD is better than that one!

http://brandonshoup.weebly.com/uploads/1/5/3/0/15308702/4812960_orig.jpg

That's the same exact thing they said about the Model-T Ford!  :-X

There's a reason why bitcoin's market cap is so much larger. LTC is nothing but a bad clone, offering little to no progress, and i don't see a reason why anyone would back it up, unless for quick profit
in times like now, when the halving is to happen. But even now, it's just bought for fast profit, and it's right back to btc again.
To me it looks like nothing more than an abandoned project, on it's way to crypto graveyard.

cheers

One of the key difference is, the Litecoin network aims to process a block every 2.5 minutes, rather than Bitcoin's 10 minutes, which its developers claim allows for faster transaction confirmation. The drawbacks of faster block times are increased blockchain size, and an increase in the number of orphaned blocks.

As far as I know nobody is stress testing the litecoin network like they are bitcoin. Which brings up the question: how much would it cost to run the equivalent stress test on litecoin? I think I read it costs around $5000 to do it to bitcoin.

you know that dashcoin has the same algorithm as monero which is cryptonight, so they share the same ring signature and the same level of anonimity, but the difference is that dash has a better name

also monero wasn't the first that utilize cryptonight, it was bytecoin...

Wow! So very wrong!

Dash uses X11. They are very proud of inventing it. And Dash doesn't use ring sigs they use the masternode system, they also invented, for their anonymity.

All cryptonote coins like monero can do anonymous transactions without the help of anyone else because of ring sigs. Dash users need the help of masternodes to mix their coins to do anonymous transactions.

Yes, and about gold.

http://financesonline.com/uploads/2013/12/gold2.jpg

no it does not use x11 see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=678232.0

first line Algorithm: CryptoNight

if there was another dashcoin in the past that was x11, then i'm not aware of it, and probably it vanished, or perhaps they changed the algo, i don't know

what i know is that dash is using cryptonigh

Because Bitcoin is most accepted by merchants, as well as the most frequent transactions   ;D

is so simply BTC was the first, is "stable" and everybody accept it, this dont mean that Litecoin is bad or something like that, this just mean that ppl is using BTC more than other cryptos, same as the rest of alt coins.

Bitcoin is the most well known, has the most users, gets the most promotion, but doesn't mean others are less better.

I think wires are getting crossed.

Dashcoin [DSH] does use the CryptoNight algo, and was called Dashcoin from its beginning.

However, there is also Dash [DASH]. i.e XCoin -> DarkCoin -> DASH. Darkcoin rebranded to DASH, which has confused some folks. It does use the X11 algo.

Sorry, I misread the coin you were comparing. I saw dashcoin and assumed dash (darkcoin) seeing as their marketcaps are close and development teams are large. You didn't misspeak, dashcoin is a cryptonote coin and therefore does use cryptonight like all the rest.

Bitcoin is awesome!!!! I like it however I don't about litecoin. but I really like bitcoin

Well no it depends on what you are judging the contest on.  If its just code quality then bitcoin isnt the best. If its popularity and usability then it is the clear winner.

well no problem, it's not our fault if the altsection is a complete mess, from any point of view

and they especially said to not use the same name for different algo, which could lead to confusion, like they did for bitcoin too, at the beginning, with bitcoin scrypt

i remember that it was banned from this forum as well

Obviously Bitcoin is much better than litecoin.Because Bitcoin has big market and world wide acceptance. 

I wonder if mining empty litecoin blocks will give you a serious advantage. I mean mining empty bitcoin blocks is already done, because its faster to spread an empty block to 50% of the nodes than spreading a 1MB block through thousands of nodes via p2p.

Did someone try if there is a reasonable difference?

It make you wonder why bitcoin because it was the first of its class, is like pairing litecoin and feathercoin the people give its value, we could say bitcoin is a lot better organize with bigger players in the game.

Yes it is true. Having more companies will make it a better coin. Larger companies bitcoin is depends on each people usage, the more usage the more

coin and the bigger is the company. I guess that is a lot of question why they are using bitcoin more than other coin. If there are no special things

about this coin compared to others it wont has a bigger player

Bitcoin has notoriety. Something all other alt coins don't have.

Network effect is so damn important, people seem to not get it. The best technology isn't always the one that ends up winning, but in this case, there isn't even better technology... tell me a coin that is technologically better that companies would find worth it dumping their BTC based infrastructures and investments to jump on it.. there's none. All the geniuses of coding are in Bitcoin, or indirectly working in something related to it.

Yes i actually meant regarding coding quality and some features, particularly in some 2.0 startups.

Yup, there are always a lot of examples to this, for example with videogames. When the Gameboy came out it was awesome, but then they announced the GameGear which smashes the Gameboy technology wise, but guess what, it was a big flop and it never got even close to the Gameboy's amazing fame or "network effect."
Same for the Saturn vs the Playstation, or the Dreamcast vs Playstation 2... network effect and a powerful brand is half of the success.

Because this

https://i.imgur.com/dr3ztIv.jpg

LTC price follows BTC but mostly for speculation reasons. Also it may have developers actively supporting it but provides nothing new or innovative against bitcoin. So between the two the choise is obvious.

you can not compare bitcoin with paypal at this stage. bitcoin is at its early stages and still needs more time and acceptance while paypal was around much more time hence the bigger market.

Paypal IPO'd 4 years into existence @ 1.5 billion. Bitcoin is in year 5.

Bitcoin isn't better it's just adopted and taken better by the mainstream.  Bitcoin could easily be Litecoin and we'd be in the same position, but Bitcoin reached the market first.

Just my thoughts though.

You can't compare that. Paypal was implemented in a worldwide and huge business. It could be marketed HUGE and without costs by ebay. And they pressed hard so that users had to use paypal. The result was paypal getting a widely used worldwide currency.

Bitcoin instead had nothing like that. So that bitcoin is at the state it is now shows that there is some value in it.

Litcoin is the previous version of digital currency and bitcoins are the earlier one.
Bitcoin has an active group of core developers which helps in implementing and making easy to use by every one.  :);D
Every thing has some drawbacks as Litcoin have for what "Bitcoin" introduced... ;D

It's likely the in the long run no alt coin will outperform bitcoin. its hard to say which alt coin will survive and hit critical mass

Better in what way? A thing does not have to be better than something else for it to be more valuable than it.

Bitcoin has a lager crowd. Litecoin is just for pure trading

This. True for most other alt coins too.

my only issue with LTC is will it keep its historical of between 0.006 LTC to 0.01 LTC to BTC format ..if so ..I can make some $$$ still mining it

and the usual when to hold and when to sell with the halving coming up

interesting times..but you'd think LTC would exist in some format as an alternative to BTC just cause humans LIKE alternatives

but I've no clue...just tossing it out there as a plea to the ASIC gods :)

With bitcoin, we have a secure, programmable form of money that can be used for global transactions, that cannot be forged, that is fully audit-able, that is actually software that can be built into anything and everything.  It allows a secure system of exchanging value between people, and indeed machines, who have never met, that can be trusted, verified and never forged.

Litecoin to a lesser extent is the same...if you are making sidechains say for BTC I can see sidechains being made for LTC for the same reasons and also the additional
reason of speculation (LTC) and/or some folk just don't like BTC from all the FUD in the press etc

but I take your point..again the question is will LTC and/or some other ALTS survive ..even at the current minimal ratios to BTC in the future..
if so not a lot of risk holding some alts...if not ..well ..on the road to tulips...not so good...

just saying human nature I assume? that LTC at least will survive as some kinda very small scale alternative to BTC

but then again what do I know I believed in 2013 BFL and drank the kool aid (refunded 1yr 20 days later by luck) but still ..consider the source :)

my issue is I've been mining LTC and holding so when and how much do I convert it to BTC now/wait/what?

crypto never a dull moment :)



 

Technically bitcoin isn't any better than litecoin.

Bitcoin had the advantage of being first to market, and really that's mostly what counts when it comes to adoption.

Bitcoin has faced growing competition from newer cryptocurrencies, one of which is litecoin. They have lots of similarities since they are cryptocurrencies. But at the end of the day, the main difference lies in the mining algorithm for each cryptocurrency. Bitcoin makes use of the longstanding SHA-256 algorithm, whereas Litecoin makes use of a comparatively new algorithm known as Scrypt. This has significant implications on the computing power needed to mine the altcoins and the security associated per unit, making bitcoin the more superior alternative in this regard.

Litecoin has the better wealthdistribution which could possibly help it to get greater network effect than BTC which is heavily concentrated. Also LTC does make more transactions per second thus it could accomodate more txs in the same time like BTC does.

Also LTC isn't heavily associated with child porn and drug trade and all that like BTC is. It has the cleaner image, is faster, has a more slim blockchain and NO GAVIN or devided community and ongoing drama. And the halving is coming up.
Only idiots hold no LTC.

Bitcoin's public history is littered with theft, scams, etc... Litecoin has a cleaner public image.
Granted early bitcoin was wild west of new tech and that pioneering always attracts criminal activity. But Litecoin was only around 1.75 yrs behind and major bitcoin adoption was still non-existent for a number of years both were actively spreading roots.

But you will always have Litecoin being the little brother of bitcoin. "What is litecoin?" "It's similar to bitcoin." and conversations like that.

So you will never be able to detach litecoin from bitcoin and that means that the bad image will follow.

you can get the answer to your question easily by looking at the recent news about Greece's financial issues.

Greeks, in order to save up money and ... they turned to bitcoin not litecoin and 99% of them would most probably never even hear about litecoin in their life and happily invest bitcoin and use it. :D

Bitcoin is parent of cryptoworld and others are alts, I hope you got your answer... :)

I never use litecoin because it's less popular than bitcoin.

Have you not sniffed the air recently? Bitcoin's image is slowly turning the corner. The quantity of mainstream derision has slowed to a trickle.

Throughout all of the bashing and sniffiness there was hardly ever a mention along the lines of 'hey, but there's this other one which is, like, nice'. And the silence is just as deafening now it's slowly becoming acceptable to admit BTC is on to something.  

LTC has its place. If it had been leading the way then the image problems would've instantly jumped across to there. They're protocols at heart, not companies or people. Whatever bad smells they give off are from the users. Once more users actually use them the early dirt drifts away.

Bitcoin is the recognizable face of cryptocurrency.

Litecoin, not so much.  Litecoin serves now as a low entry price point for investing in the crypto world.

Bitcoin is supported by a larger group of people.Bitcoin has more usage than Litecoin. Litecoin doesn't have any real-world  adoption and bitcoin is more familiar than litecoin. Bitcoin is known by most of the people.

People are actually taking the time to stress test bitcoin, unlike litecoin. I think the first btc stress test was supposed to cost $5000. I'm curious how much it would cost to stress test litecoin in a similar way.

Litecoin was stress tested very early in it's life. A fix was developed that makes it very expensive to stress the ledger now. This fix was also passed on to the bitcoin core developers and they dismissed it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3ci25k/the_current_spam_attack_on_bitcoin_is_not/
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/1536

And bitcoin is priced 50x the price of litecoin because of being the #1.  It seems like quite a gap in pricing though it wouldn't take that much for litecoin to become equally used.

litecoin needs 500x more effort to be accepted as much as bitcoin is accepted and then it's price might increase to bitcoin levels.
besides as long as litecoin price is controlled by pump and dumps, like what has been happening in the last month, nobody is going to think of litecoin more than an altcoin which is being pumped.

Yes, I know this one is hard for someone to swallow. But it is the truth.
Litecoin is just another altcoin.

Yeah, the users of bitcoin are far more as compared to litecoin, and there are many online merchants who have started to accept bitcoins as a mode of payment, but the same doesn't goes with litecoin.

And the other major thing is People have heard about the bitcoins but yet they hesitate in investing in bitcoins, and it would not be easy for people to trust litecoins when there is presence of bitcoins.

True, but on the back of everyone's mind it will always have that special place as THE altcoin, the original altcoin. So I can see why Litecoin may disappear and always have a relative value to Bitcoin, and maybe be used as a tool when people is paranoid about Bitcoins future even tho there's nothing to fear (example, when we had the blockchain splits crisis).

Market acceptance.

 Nothing else matters if very few or no merchants will accept it.

 Bitcoin appears to have more market acceptance than ALL OTHER CRYPTOCOINS COMBINED by a fairly wide margin.

bitcoin was there first, has the largest push behind it, has all the peripheral businesses, and has the tech on it's side.

Daddy is Daddy.

Bitcoin is introduced first and is more popular then any other digital currencies, and people have more faith in bitcoins as compared to any other crypto. And majority of merchants accepts bitcoins as a mode of payment. I have rarely seen any accepting litecoin as a mode of payment. And it will keep on increasing in the coming future.

what would happen if a few corporations decide to buy up litecoin just because is cheaper and is second to bitcoin, would large part of the bitcoin backers turn into litecoin backers has well if litecoin reaches 150 usd or so?

Simple answer bitcoin is more famous than litecoin

I don't think that kind of forced push would be sustainable.  The Bitcoin ecosystem of investors, merchants, and miners is hard to duplicate, and personally I don't think it will be without major new innovations.

That's like comparing the VCR to the Betamax.  Ba-da-boom, ba-da bing!

Bitcoin is the real deal. Litecoin is the imitator. Says so right in the name. Branding is everything.

That's true and people have just started to believe in bitcoins as a currency, so it is difficult that very soon they switch over to such a currency which is comparatively very new. And as there are many people who still doesn't have faith in bitcoins so for them litecoin is far away, As the users of bitcoin itself would think twice before investing in litecoins.

Anybody who has heard of litecoin has definitely heard of Bitcoin.
The converse isn't true.
Bitcoin is truly the gold standard in cryptocurrencies.

Betamax was a type of VCR.
 You'r probably thinking of the VHS vs. Betamax war, which isn't really comparable (the higher quality Betamax format LOST the war due to better marketing of "good enough" on the part of the VHS side).
 Eventually, BOTH sides of that war lost out to recordable DVD....

I know Bitcoin is better than Litecoin with bigger market cap, network and all that. But there are few things bitcoin should learn from Litecoin.

https://99bitcoins.com/this-is-why-bitcoin-should-learn-from-litecoin/

DVD recorders didn't exist until 20 years after the Betamax vs VHS format war was decided. You can say recordable DVD lost out to recordable BluRay which lost out to hard disk recording which lost out to cloud recording. These changes happened much faster than the change from VCR's to DVD recorders.

More like 15 years or so, but that's just a pointer to how much faster technology has been progressing over the last couple of centuries, with a usually-increasing RATE of change as well.

 I also question that "cloud" has supplanted anything yet - it's trying, but there are still a LOT of minuses to it and a lot of us that flat out don't TRUST the cloud due to those minuses.




 But back to the original question - when Litecoin manages even HALF of the adoption rate of Bitcoin by real-world merchants (I do count net merchants in that, given how much I've bought from Newegg and others over the last decade) THEN it might be a viable competator. Even one TENTH might be enough to make it viable for the long term, but iffy.


Right now I don't know of ANY major merchant that accepts Litecoin - as long as that continues, Litecoin (like ALL of the other altcoins) has no chance of long-term survival, much less turning out to be competition to Bitcoin.


 It's not that I don't LIKE Litecoin - I paid for several video cards back when GPU mining was viable through mining income from it, and even managed to ROI 2 of my 3 Gridseed blades (the third was at the $1600ish level, I doubt that one will EVER ROI though it's still marginally profitable).
 It's that Litecoin is .... well, not a joke compared to Bitcoin, but not far away from being one.

 I just don't see the long-term market having much use for more than 1 cryptocurrency unless the competators provide REAL WORLD advantages in different ways to each other. So far, I don't see that out of ANY of the current altcoins - they all seem at best to a destiny of a "small niche" alternative.
 Fancy "technological better" points tend to mean NOTHING to most of the public, which is WHY the better technology but greatly inferior marketing of Betamax LOST the VCR wars to the "good enough" VHS.
 That is also why Windows remains the dominant desktop OS, even though several "technologically better" alternatives exist and have existed in the past - Windows is "good enough" and VERY VERY well marketed.



 This is not to say that Bitcoin will REMAIN the 800 pound gorilla - it's got some issues of it's own that are starting to get some serious notice, that will eventually limit it's ABILITY for wider adoption if they are not corrected. The "number of transactions" issue has already been getting some active attention (and fights about fixing it), the insane SIZE of the blockchain is a major issue (with some workarounds, but those workarounds have issues themselves), the long time to confirm a transaction (makes it bloody close to USELESS in a non-online retail environment), the eventual elimination of block rewards that will probably kill mining and make confirmations take forever, make me inclined that BitCoin is open to losing out to someone creating a TRUE better answer.

There is a movie called bitcoin

wiki leaks now accepting litecoin so score one for them

first of all bitcoin has a lot more users secondly more companies accept it thirdly the price of it is much bigger and can easier grow as more and more people use it

This is pretty much it. Bitcoin was first and it is more publicly known. The average people get scared to learn about more than one cryptocurrency, they are happy to have "understood" how the first one worked.
Bitcoin could use a different algorithm, different block size, everything else could be different until it was the first one. If it came second, it would be the other way around.

Yes, the main advantage is the greater popularity and support for Bitcoin. Once you get this type of cryptocurrency, any additions (more security, faster confirmations etc.) are not likely to add that much providing than the first cryptocurrency is already functional. And it is.

Love litecoin, though, and other cryptos :D

Bitcoin is better than Litecoin because has great potential especially compared to generic clones, which most of alt coins are. more stable and supported by larger community

in brief, marketing. BTC have more hipsters using it than Litecoin :)

Most secure network and block chain.

I think bitcoin better than litecoin because bitcoin has the highest price  ;D

More than nothing isn't saying much  ;)

Also, Bitcoin has faster confirmations than Litecoin.

You may think it's the other way round, with Litecoin having 4 times shorter block mining time. But those blocks deliver way more than 4 times less certainty. Consider the computer power you'd need to "reverse" a Bitcoin or a Litecoin transaction, after 1 minute, 5 minute, 20 minutes, etc. It should become increasingly harder (computationally more intensive) in time. Bitcoin clearly wins in that aspect.

After x minutes of time, a Bitcoin transaction is typically more "confirmed" (can be trusted to never be reversed) than a Litecoin transaction.

Is there much differences between litecoin and bitcoin? People so far knows Bitcoin instead of litecoin or Bitcoin-related program likes Ethereum, why Bitcoin is better than litecoin or Ethereum, that's the reason, Most people knows only Bitcoin and most people use Bitcoin only.

in my opinion any sort of cryptocurrency that is created after bitcoin no matter what its name, is irrelevant and can not come near the popularity of bitcoin as long as they are not introducing something new and useful.

litecoin is just a copy of bitcoin with minor differences that doesn't matter to the end user, so it is never going to matter much.

More widely known is the most important thing in my opinion since that's mean more people using it mean bitcoin can be spend more easily, while litecoin are just copy from bitcoin with some modification.

I use bitcoin for two years already, but never use litecoin yet.

https://i.imgur.com/uxrRBdI.jpg?3

https://i.imgur.com/a69N5xK.jpg?2

Nice!!!

I think almost everyone would choose bitcoin, almost the same reasons, the price of bitcoin bitcoin larger or more popular

Most of people may heard about bitcoin, but they never know litecoin/
                                                                                               

BTC is much more popular than LTC and much more in daily use  ;)

So we've heard plenty advantages of Bitcoin over Litecoin.

How about the opposite, is there any advantage of Litecoin over Bitcoin? Honestly, I'm not against Litecoin per se but I can't think of any.

well i don't know about it but i prefer bitcoin more than litecoin since bitcoin is more established than litecoin in my opinion :D

Same as Euro vs USD, Gold vs Silver, etc?

Once/if both are widely accepted, then the advantage is diversification. If BTC hits a snag you can fall back to LTC, and vice-versa.

Having alternatives is preferable to having no alternatives.

okey because Litecoin, however, uses the scrypt algorithm – originally named as s-crypt, but pronounced as 'script'. This algorithm incorporates the SHA-256 algorithm, but its calculations are much more serialised than those of SHA-256 in bitcoin. Scrypt favours large amounts of high-speed RAM, rather than raw processing power alone. As a result, scrypt is known as a 'memory hard problem'.

The consequences of using scrypt mean that there has not been as much of an 'arms race' in litecoin (and other scrypt currencies), because there is (so far) no ASIC technology available for this algorithm. However, this is soon to change, thanks to companies like Alpha Technologies, which is now taking preorders.

Market Capitalization and Popularity

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s market capitalization sits at roughly $4 billion. Whether this figure strikes you as either high or low will depend largely on your historical perspective. When we consider that Bitcoin’s market capitalization was barely $42,000 in July 2010, its current figure seems staggering. When, however, we consider that it has declined by roughly 66 percent since its all-time high in December 2013, its current figure seems comparatively modest. What is clear is that Bitcoin remains by far the most highly valued player in the cryptocurrency space.

Litecoin, however, has also made significant progress in recent years. An analysis of Google search data shows that public interest in both currencies have been highly correlated since the launch of Litecoin in 2011.

litecoin trends

Based on market capitalization and public interest alone, the characterization of Litecoin as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold seems warranted.

Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042015/bitcoin-vs-litecoin-whats-difference.asp#ixzz3hrShPRKS
Follow us: @Investopedia on Twitter

The REAL reason there has been little of an "arms race" for Scrypt-based mining hardware is that the market is TINY compared to SHA256 hardware.

 I am sometimes supprised there's been any sort of an arms race at all for Scrypt.


 That is the SAME reason no other algorythm has ever had ASIC hardware sold for it - X11 (think X13/X15 were also covered by that project) had one company say they were working on it, but they "didn't get enough preorders" to finance the actual development of the chip and appear to have dropped the project entirely.

Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency it as the gold standard

Eh, I'm also pro-Bitcoin over Litecoin, but I can give one important advantage of Litecoin over Bitcoin:

Litecoin is less likely to fork into two coins within the next year.

Too late, there's already been a "Litecoin splitoff" - using a different algorythm IIRC.

One factor that makes litecoin lower in value compared to bitcoin is that there are only a total of 21 million bitcoins available while litecoin can reach up to 84 million based on its mining algorithms. With this, some analysts believe that litecoin can offer a psychological advantage to bitcoin, as consumers often prefer to have transactions in whole units instead of fractions. Litecoin also enjoys a faster speed of transaction compared to bitcoin, as the former takes only 2.5 minutes while the latter needs 9 minutes. But at the end of the day Bitcoin is much better than Litecoin since the number of crowd who use Bitcoin is greater. And cryptocurrencies live only because of the population who used it, if the population drops the currency will drop. But with Bitcoin as the founder of all the currencies, the integrity and stability is much stronger than litecoin. It earn the trust of lots people and it will surely live longer.  It can still be a future currency of the world, and many believe of that.

 ROFLMAO - you do realise that appx. 1% of ALL retail transactions happen in "whole units" in the USA - dollars are COMMONLY split into fractions, it's why we HAVE coints.


 cent is short for "1% of a dollar", by the way.


 I don't see this "whole units" argument as being more than a strawman argument at best.



 The one REAL advantage that Litecoin has over Bitcoin, IN THEORY, is faster confirmations - but even there it's bloody SLOW compared to cash or credit/debit cards, which limits it a TON for retail usage. I doubt that ANY cryptocoin will ever overcome that issue for retail sales, but given the trend towards online sales taking a larger percentage of all sales it leaves a rather LARGE niche for cryptocoins to get a piece of.

Yeah and bitcoin has more market acceptance as compared to litecoins, and the adoption level of bitcoin is increasing day by day and as it is the first crypto currency, people have more faith in it as compared to any other crypto currency.

Actually this not a bad argument. Let's say you buy something worth $10. You pay 0.0357 BTC or 2.5 LTC.

That's what they mean by fractions. It's easier to remember compared to zero point zero something ;)



I had to look at the timestamp of this message just to be sure it's from 2015 :) There were quite a few companies that sold scrypt ASIC devices. Gridseed, KNC Titan, Alcheminer... That started about a year ago, btw ;)

But the arms race has come to a halt as most of them have stopped making new ones. But you can get a limited quantity of used ones on Ebay etc... Expect a lot more after the halving ;)

Alpha Tech are either scammers or utterly incompetent. They should have shipped over a year ago, but so far nothing :)

To get back on topic. How is bitcoin better? It has a bigger user base and that's about it.

Litecoin is essentially indeed a fork with some modifications/improvements. The number of coins and the hash algorithm are not really very important.

What makes it an improvement is 2.5 minutes per block and anti-spam filters. Meaning it can handle much more transactions than BTC before the block size becomes an issue. And we all know how hard it is to get people to agree on that. ;)

An explanation from Warren (lead LTC dev):

So litecoin is a type of crypto that is useful in buying coffee and pizza.

You seem to be confusing transaction time with confirmation time. Maybe this clarifies things:

Transaction time (the time it takes to process a payment)
Bitcoin: 1-2 sec
Litecoin: 1-2 sec
Credit card: 5-10 sec
Paypal: 3-5 sec

Money arrival time (the time at which the merchant actually receives the money and can spend it)
Bitcoin: 1-2 sec
Litecoin: 1-2 sec
Credit card: several business days
Paypal: several minutes to several weeks (depending on payment method of customer)

Confirmation time (the time at which the merchant can be sure the payment won't be reversed)
Bitcoin: 10 minutes
Litecoin 2½ minutes
Credit card: 6+ months
Paypal: 3+ months

So.. exactly what was the problem with cryptocoins, again?

Well yes, but not just limited to coffee and pizza. Why would Litecoin not be useful to do donations, micropayments, or large expenses such as cars or real estate?

 Multiple errors.
 You can't spend Bitcoin or Litecoin 'till the transaction(s) that gave them to you have been confirmed - normally MULTIPLE confirmations needed. 10 mins ABSOLUTE MINIMUM for Bitcoin, 2.5 mins ABSOLUTE MINIMUM for Litecoin, commonly an hour or two for either and I've seen it take 6+ hours on either on rare occasions.
 More importantly, you don't even know *IF* the transaction is going to go through 'till at least the first confirmation. THAT is the big issue with trying to use any Cryptocoin in a retail store environment - customers do NOT want to wait around for MINUTES to see if they're going to be able to buy something, they often get irritated if it takes more than a few SECONDS on a credit card transaction.

 A credit card processor that takes DAYS to process a transaction is incompetant or a ripoff. I had a merchant account for a few years back in the 1990s, I NEVER saw it take hours much less days to recieve my payment for a transaction, unless I couldn't get into the automated system AT ALL, and on automated transactions the norm was SECONDS. Even on the weekends (I did a LOT of sales at computer shows and hamfests) I'd have the money in my account before I got packed up after the show ended and I could get to an ATM to check (hours at MOST, but couldn't tell for sure how long given time between the sale and when I was available TO check).
 The only way it would take DAYS for a credit card transaction to get the money to the seller is if they ran the transaction manually, then it took the seller days to actually SUBMIT it.

 Paypal has often had merchant money from sales "on hold" for MONTHS at a time. Go look at the class action lawsuit they settled several years back - then note that the folks currently investigating to file ANOTHER ONE are seeing this same issue DESPITE PAYPAL AGREEMENT IN THE ORIGINAL CASE SETTLEMENT TO STOP DOING THAT.


 MAJOR Error. Confirmation time is NOT chargeback limit time.
 Cryptocoins do not HAVE a chargeback mechanism at all, which is one reason merchants LIKE cryptocoin payments - they know they HAVE the money once the transaction has been processed at all, it's just a matter of time because there is no way to reverse the transaction no matter what.

Complete and utter nonsense.

It's perfectly fine within the Bitcoin protocol to create, sign and broadcast a new transaction, using output from an earlier transaction that was just pushed before, and has not been confirmed yet.

Here's an example: first this transaction (https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/tx/95a565c69264a92447ea9a755e19f64910242d1caa7fb406df82efd5e7ed19a4) was done, and then before the first transaction was confirmed, this second transaction (https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/tx/25bf36a6f1c849f24372f8e97f5e6e22444a9ae4a6f0ef65d088fdfe63541ac7) (which spends an output from the first) was sent as well. At the moment I'm writing this, neither is confirmed, and I expect them to be both confirmed in the same block (either the first next block from now, or later, doesn't matter).
*edit* → right after posting this, I noticed they were both confirmed in block 368710. You tell me how that's possible, if the 2nd transaction (which spends output from the 1st) would have required the 1st to be confirmed first.

It gets even more confusing when you say "normally multiple confirmations needed" - what do you mean "normally", as if some transactions require more confirmations than others before they can be spent, or what? It's nonsense. Any transaction's output can be spent immediately, with zero confirmations.

10 mins "absolute minimum" to wait for a confirmation? (which isn't even necessary to wait for in the first place, but for argument's sake)

Bollocks, sometimes it's 10 minutes, sometimes 3, sometimes 28, it's all probability. It's 10 minutes on average, but the "absolute minimum" waiting time for a confirmation is ZERO minutes.

And "commonly an hour or two" is even more bollocks. It's all statistics you know. The probability you have to wait an hour or more for a confirmation is 0.24% (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1-%28integrate+exp%28-x%2F10%29%2F10+for+x%3D0..60%29) for Bitcoin, and 0.0000000037% (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1-%28integrate+exp%28-x%2F2.5%29%2F2.5+for+x%3D0..60%29) for Litecoin. Likelyhood of having to wait for two hours is 0.00061% (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1-%28integrate+exp%28-x%2F10%29%2F10+for+x%3D0..120%29) for Bitcoin, and infeasibly small for Litecoin. So, no, it's sure as hell not "commonly".

This completely contradicts what you're writing below.
As soon as you see a transaction, and no funny business is going on (like an existing conflicting transaction in the memory pool, or tons of dust output with zero tx fee), then you're already very, very sure it will be confirmed. Maybe in the next block, maybe in 10 blocks from now, but it will be confirmed.

Exactly, so why the hell would any merchant ever make a customer await even a single confirmation. This is what I mean with "Bitcoin payments are instant": nobody will have to wait 10 minutes (or whatever the amount time it takes until the next confirmation). With Bitcoin, you send your payment, and you're done. In a second. Nobody waiting, nobody at risk.

And yes, obviously, there is no such thing as chargebacks with cryptocoins. I mean the concept of a transaction becoming irreversible, or permanent, or set in stone. With Bitcoin, theoretically, a transaction is not 'guaranteed' (although *extremely* unlikely to be nullified) until it's confirmed. With paypal or credit card it can be reversed (and happens quite often) until the chargeback/dispute period expires, and that's typically 3-6 months.

I think it is different bro, you cant compare between apple and iphone, because they are the same, and litecoin bitcoin is not the same, these two different coin

Bitcoin is the standard  when comparing among cryptocurrencies. Also look and compare on the size of community. It's the number of support from the community that makes it strong.

Bitcoin has prospered and become generally accepted as a form of currency. Unfortunately, although Litecoin flirted with success, it has not achieved this status. I personally had a lot of hope for it.

Bitcoin has more popularity over Litecoin and there is currently a greater amount of merchants who accept bitcoin in comparison to Litecoin.
Also, all major stores that are accepting Bitcoin, are not accepting Litecoin.

Because the market for litecoin is so much volatile that if you spend much large amounts of litecoin in an transaction and the prices went up after some hours then you will loose much money.
Bitcoin is much stable now as compared to litecoin.

If you expect stability, you will not find it in cryptocurrency, but if i have to choose, i choose bitcoin

maybe because bitcoin was older than litecoin.
and it was adopt first by user and it also the price is higher than litecoin..
if you will compare bitcoin and litecoin there are a lot of thing that good  about bitcoin than litecoin..
but i will not say litecoin is not that good it is more litecoin is just like following the footstep of bitcoin..

And this is because the source code of bitcoin was used in making litecoin and all other altcoins.
These all altcoins are pretty scams which everyone fall for.

bitcoin just got adopted earlier than litecoin but its the same
all altcoin is just like bitcoin..there are just not get adopted by all the bitcoin user

 Alpha Technology has been "taking preorders" for a very long time - and still has yet to deliver anything. Not sure if they count actively as a scam at this point, but all the available evidence is pointing that way, though it's possible they were underfunded and just couldn't deliver.

 
 The real, abet fairly small, Scrypt arms race has been between Gridseed (now part of SFARDS), Innosilicon (Their A2 Terminator and various spinoff designs), KnC (the Titan DID eventually ship, with very high performance and junk reliability, and a subsequent withdrawl from ALL retail selling or any further interest in Scrypt), Alcheminer (which has since sold out with no indication they are going to bother with a new generation product), Zeus (dead), Silverfish (also appears to be dead), and I think I might be forgetting one.

 The ONLY folks that have done a "second generation" of Scrypt chips to date are SFARDS and the "announced" Innosilicon A4.


 Compare to the dozens of Bitcoin ASIC chips to date, and at least 5 current companies with a "new generation chip", often in the 3'd 4'th or even 5'th generation from that company, announced or delivered in 2015 alone (Sfards has released, BitMain has announced "soon", Innosilicon has announced tapeout, KnC has announced deployment, BitFury appears to be deploying but only sells to large farm groups now) - and some question as to how many OTHERS with track records are working quietly on "new generation" products with no announcement yet like Avalon.

 Interesting in theory, but try DOING that with an actual Bitcoin client. I've yet to see one that will let you spend Bitcoin from unconfirmed transactions, and IME they generally require multiple confirmations before they allow you to then move that Bitcoin on down the line.
 It's a GOOD thing actually, as a security measure.



 Nope, it's experience. I do grant that it's less likely to take that long on Lightcoin.



 Which is different from a chargeback. On a chargeback, the transaction WAS confirmed, then later the CC issuer was told to reverse it due to some reason - non-delivery of goods or fraud being probably the most common issues leading to a chargeback.

 Bitcoin is better at this time due to acceptance. This might be in part due to the larger user base, but I'm more inclined to say that the MUCH larger user base of Bitcoin is due to it's widespread acceptance compared to all other cryptocoins combined.

In one way.

But the way that matters...

...

Critical mass.

Has someone made or could make a social networking site better than Factbook? Of course.... but it doesn't matter the slightest because Facebook has critical mass.. and as long as they don't f%¤# up they will be dominant.

Was VHS better than BETA video tapes? No... in fact most experts said that BETA was technically supirior... but VHS got the critical mass...

That's it... and that's all.

I think you've been using old or uncommon clients or wallets apps then.

There's absolutely nothing theoretical about this. Both Mycelium and Breadwallet, the two most popular (and best, imho) wallets on Android and iOS, allow you to spend unconfirmed input immediately. I know some other clients do require a confirmation before letting you spend it, but that's purely an arbitrary limitation within that client, and has nothing to do with Bitcoin itself. Again, there's nothing theoretical about this, I do it all the time. It works fine. I receive coins, and send some of them to another address immediately, without waiting for any confirmations, and without requiring any fancy strange specialized apps or tweaking the settings or whatever.

Forcing you to even wait for multiple confirmations is totally ridiculous. Any app that does that should be ditched immediately. Why the heck would you want to use an app that imposes all sorts of unnecessary restrictions on you.

Again, I think you have been using old or uncommon wallets. If they force you to await multiple confirmations (for no apparent reason even), then yeah sure it might take longer. But that's completely unnecessary.

I did the maths for you, the probability of having to wait an hour for a confirmation is extremely small, having to wait two hours is astronomically small.

Semantics. You get my point. With credit cards and paypal, there is no such thing as a confirmation. There is a notification of receiving a payment, which is the equivalent of receiving a Bitcoin transaction (nothing confirmed yet). This is a matter of seconds. Then there is a certain period of uncertainty, where you will probably end up receiving the money, but it might also be cancelled or nullified or reversed (no matter what you call it, you end up without the money). You don't know until it's, well, 'set in stone' so to speak. With Bitcoin, this is 10 minutes on average. With paypal and credit card, this is 3-6 months on average.

[IMO]Well, Bitcoin is older than Litecoin. And Bitcoin has the higher price, and also more users. So it's mean that Bitcoin is more secure, maybe.[CMIIW] ;)

well i think ... its just bitcoin was the first ever .. and has more popularity and has been talked about more often then any other kind of coin .. if same happened for litecoin m sure it will start rising too

I choose bitcoin

Network power, bitcoin is secure by xxxxxxxxxxx hash power, litecoin is secure by xxx hash power :P

 Bitcoin Core, which I keep updated.


 Never heard of either, probably because I don't pay Apple inflated pricing and have no interest in anything that runs Android.


 Given how long I've SEEN it take for confirmations sometimes, wherever that "math" came from appears to have at least one seriously flawed assumption involved.

Bitcoin is much better than litecoin. Because Bitcoin has big users base and world wide acceptance

There is more infrastructure in place for bitcoin.  Bitcoin has weathered a few storms:  mt gox, silk road, various heists and gambling issues... and yet, Bitcoin reigns on as the king of all crypto.  Bitcoin was first, it has street cred.  Bitcoin has received more scrutiny and despite all the doubts, major retailers are on board and bitcoin is flourishing.

Litecoin is a comic relief sidekick. It will never be a hero. Litecoin developers will never do any heavy lifting. Bitcoin is alpha dog.

I think network effect and first mover advantage is what sets Bitcoin and Litecoin apart. In order for Litecoin to beat Bitcoin it would have to be really superior technologically which we know it's not the case. Moreover, Litecoin is just a copy of Bitcoin that is little bit tweaked, nothing else.

Yup, Bitcoin arrived first, which is why it's more successful. Bitcoin has the community, publicity, and mining power that no other cryptocurrency can boast. For an altcoin, Litecoin or other, to surpass Bitcoin, it needs to be something that revolutionalizes an already revolutionary industry.

the value per unit and propaganda of bit coin its higher ever one start from bitcoin to litecoin are just a few and the speed of businness and offers are even more into bitcoin so bitcoin its better i like lite but not that much

of course, from all aspects of the bitcoin more better, so the larger market for bitcoin

Litecoin is Pepsi to Bitcoin's Coke. Actually, Litecoin might be RC Cola

Good one. So what can we learn, after 20 years nobody will use bitcoin or litecoin any more? :D

I think bitcoin better than altcoin, because bitcoin is the first coin that has the highest value...  ;D

Litecoin is more like some small generic cola - and last time I checked Pepsi might have more market share than Coke (Coke lost out a TON with the "New Coke" fiasco, though they seem to have recovered somewhat since then).

 Betamax WAS a VCR format. The comparison there should be "Betamax vs. VHS" - neither of which are still around any more except perhaps for tapes that are likely wearing out on old used machines that very few folks bother with any more unless they already HAVE one....

i agree. OP should discuss the reverse argument of why litecoin is better or worse than bitcoin. or even better talk about why even somebody would consider litecoin instead of bitcoin as a cryptocurrency while it doesn't really offer anything better or different

Bitcoin is supported by a larger group of people. Bitcoin has more usage than Litecoin.  bitcoin is more familiar than litecoin. Bitcoin is known by most of the people.

I like both coins, I am not sure if, in a technological sense, one is better than the other. However, I would much rather use Bitcoin, because many more places accept Bitcoin, while very little accept Litecoin.

BitCoin ATM's are all over the world, not hard too find one.

Bitcoin arrived first. And that was it. After Bitcoin there were many altcoin which evolved and upgraded concept of Satoshi to higher level. Bitcoin was one of them.
The Litecoin blockchain is capable of handling higher transaction volume than its counterpart - Bitcoin.
Due to more frequent block generation, the network supports more transactions without a need to modify the software in the future.
As a result, merchants get faster confirmation times, while still having ability to wait for more confirmations when selling bigger ticket items.
Bitcoin in general is more robust version of bitcoin. Every feature is upgraded and modified, then why it is not more popular and wider known than bitcoin?

apparently i will think LTC would be better than bitcoin.
at least that blockchain would not be easily skyrocketed by those flooding.
i would wish bitcoin not to increase the size limit too high to prevent full node users from giving up due to the excessive storage for the blockchain needed.

because i trust bitcoin :)
and we know only bitcoin have great comunity

yeah everyone would choose bitcoin,
whereas litecoin are also valuable as bitcoin, it's just a different price

thats right it means bictoin have the better future 

because Bitcoin is the real innovation the first and only one crypto currency that has bright future ahead to secure the future and easy way to enjoy the early retire life.

Bitcoin and Litecoin are not fungible, like a currency MUST be. It also does not offer private transactions. Do you want everyone to know every transaction you are ever involved in, how much you get paid, how much tax you pay, etc?

Bitcoin will be great, and may give you early retirement, but there are newer crypto's using new innovation which are fungible and offer the option of private transactions. They will surely take off in a big way over the next year or two.

the number of people who have invested and will invest in bitcoin is going to always bigger. there is much more places that one can spend his bitcoins, and that is not true about litecoin.

Active development: Bitcoin has a full time paid developer and dozens of contributors. Litecoin has one part time developer.

Litecoin can handle a higher volume of transactions thanks to its faster block generation. If bitcoin were to try to match this, it would require significant updates to the code that everyone on the bitcoin network is currently running.

It is simple people follow the trend, today bitcoin is more in demand and more places accepted for buying online so btc is better than litecoin.

Bitcoin is The 1st Crypto in world most populer than litecoin  ::)

Bitcoin has a lot more drama than litecoin.  ::)

I believe they're quite same!

However, Litecoin (LTC) seems to have an advantage when it comes to faster transactions times... On the other hand... I don't know if it has bigger blocks

Supporters of Litecoin like to market it as "Silver to Bitcoin's Gold," since there will be far more Litecoins produced and blocks are generated 4 times faster, making it better for day-to-day transactions. Opponents of Litecoin point out that the number of coins produced is irrelevant, since individual coins are so divisible; the benefit of the 2.5 minute block time is debatable.

Good topic! I like.

By my opinion LTC is better,much better,faster,more functional and without all that pseudo technology improvement, untill now pseudo

Sure, there's probably exceptions. However, bitcoin was there first, has the largest push behind it, has all the peripheral businesses, and more developments

bitcoins better because there's now 2 of them; XT and core so now everyones playing a cool game with them; double or nothing  ;)

I really like LTCs increased transaction speed. I spent a week or two playing around with some Litecoin gambling sites and exchanges, and got so used to the fast confirms that I found myself annoyed with waiting when I went back to Bitcoin. Of course, Bitcoin isn't going anywhere as the top cryptocurrency, but I would like to see more Litecoin integration into sites that already accept Bitcoin

hemm litecoin is better in this section
The faster block time of litecoin reduces the risk of double spending attacks – this is theoretical in the case of both networks having the same hashing power.

I don't know if it was already said but:
Bitcoin is better because his original creator is unknown. Something that cannot be imitated never, that's the another special thing about the first Cryptocoin in the world.  :-*

$250>$3.5

Nuff' said.

Simply bitcoin is earlier than litecoin and its media coverage is way greater than litecoin.

bitcoin has more active, dedicated developers while litecoin has not so active developer.
there are far more places that you can spend your bitcoin but the same thing is not true about litecoin.
bitcoin is (sort of) the original idea but litecoin is just a copy with no useful new feature.
bitcoin has higher price, market cap, user, hodler in comparison with litecoin
in the end litecoin price history shows a dying coin minus the recent Chinese pump

yes bitcoin devs are a little too active of late  :o LOL...especially most having hands in many cookie jars (conflicts of interest both sides of recent debates).

litcoin as very active positive development, when did you even check ur facts.

Because it came first, it's more well known, people pay more for it, litecoin was just a fork of bitcoin, scrypt isn't as popular as SHA-256.....

Yet LTC has almost no transactions so there will never be a need to scale litecoin

Bitcoin isn't better it's just adopted and taken better by the mainstream.  Bitcoin could easily be Litecoin and we'd be in the same position, but Bitcoin reached the market first.

bitcoin coin became a role model for other prices, including litecoin
That's why bitcoin better than litecoin

Of course bitcoin reached the market first, litecoin is a fork of bitcoin. Litecoin wouldn't have been possible without bitcoin.

Bitcoins are more well known, are more widely accepted by merchants, and more widely known by most people.