Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoins have been around for a few years and with the recent spike, it looks like everyone is getting on the mining train. I think this will help raise the price of BTC, but do you think LTC will survive and last? Due to how hard it is now to mine BTC, I've moved to LTC in hopes of keeping some LTC and selling in a few years.

Once ASIC becomes a staple in any serious miner's business, I would expect LTC to be the coin mined by hobbyists.  I don't see why not; it's still profitable to mine BTC if you already have the equipment, but that's going to change in the future.

It's possible that LTC will become more popular and therefore your current mining efforts will be profitable, but it's certainly hard to say.  Any virtual currency mining, including BTC, is a risky economic venture.

I've seen several people talking about how BTC will be the "rich" money and LTC the "regular" money of the cryptocurrency system. Though I'm reallt not clear as to why anyone would think that, apart from "BTC was here first"... Is looking at the current exchange rate between these coins to the USD supposed to be some indication? it seems absurd if the endgame here is that BTC will not need to be exchanged for any fiat currency to be viable.

Every time I look at this topic being talked about I see this LTC to BTC comparison being done with the idea of silver being worth 1/4th of golds historical trade ratio.  but, the ratio of LTC to BTC has not reached the 1/4 ratio its actually much closer to 4/5 ratio BTC:LTC.  So yes in futures trading, LTC is the Silver to BTCs gold, but TODAY  futures trading of cryptocurrencys is nearly impossible. I say its a matter of which one "the people" promote and over all choose to use.

Bitcoin is "Bitcon's silver".

If LTC prospers it will be on its own merits and not because Bitcoin needs a silver.

I agree with this - I don't see many people (aside from miners) having a compelling reason to use LTC against BTC.

The only reason would be that blocks are solved at a faster rate (I believe it's 1/4th the time BTC takes but I could be wrong.)  It's supposed to make it better as a currency, than a store of wealth.  However, if LTC gets that popular, I can only wonder if it'll face the same issues Bitcoin is facing now.

Bitcoin rose in value because merchants accepted that as viable currency exchange media. LTC is not there yet. So, LTC has higher risk, but also higher gain.

I seriously doubt that any merchant will want ti juggle with more than one crypto-currency, so it is doubtful whether LTC will ever become anything other than what it is now.

That's what I was thinking.  However, it's also very quick and easy to switch between one coin to another, so perhaps a merchant back-end (something like BitPay) will allow a merchant to accept any currency and instantly convert it into the coin the merchant wants (or fiat.)

BTC-E makes it pretty easy to switch between coins and currencies. The more alternatives the better though. If the merchant had a backend that was dynamic and easily configure per item or per price it would help a lot. Or if there was USD price, BTC price, LTC price all listed.

Yes, this is why, here is what I think:

1. btc is the primary cryptocurrency - and will remain like that
2. ltc will become secondary medium of exchange, and will transact between p2p
3. ltc will get converted to btc whenever transaction includes merchant or goods on other end

Due to the amount of speculation in the Bitcoin market IMO Litecoin will be the next bubble for speculators, especially if MT Gox start trading Litecoins on their site. Long term who knows! Short term I think Litecoins will go up in value in a speculative bubble.

If anyone thinks this won't happen I'd love to hear your reasons/opinions

If Mt Gox starts trading LTC, it'll be a big boost to the ability of the currency to gain value. 

I personally would like to invest in both LTC and BTC.  Either way, you win. 

I hope LTC will progress like BTC did in the last 6 months :)

The difference is they use different algorithms and are not created by the same person. LTC have more complex algorithms and can utilize cpu power more. Either way invest in it as there's little difference between the both and I believe litecoins is under noticed atm.

This is what I'm really aiming for. I started mining on April 1st and LTC was worth $0.99, today it is worth over $4.

I guess the benefit of litecoin is that it is currently not possible to mine it with asics and fpgas.
ASICS are really what are making network decentralised by giving a lot of power to their respective owners.
I guess the reason it spiked, people moved mining litecoins. More ASICS = More gpus moved to other networks or sold.

What kind of benefit are you mentioning about? And who gets this benefit? ---> that benefit brings no value to LTC as a currency as well as merchant. It just protects some miners' investment in VGA only. It is totally personal issue, not BTC issue.

Eeverybody can buy ASIC rigs, right?

In real world, gold and silver are different natural substances. They co-exists by nature. However, BTC and LTC are artificially created. BTC does not need LTC as a silver counterpart. We have a single internet, we need a single internet currency only.

LTC has the same characteristics as BTC, although LTC is more secure is shows more strangth as a prifitable and more valuable coin the BTC, but it's anyones game

Eeverybody can buy ASIC rigs, wrong. If I want to start mining I go and buy processors/videocards and compete against processors/videocards and even fpgas these things are readily avaliable. However i we look at asics:
Avalon = Limited quantity you cant sign up for any batch.
BFL = Started pre-orders poop-lot time ago never ever delivered.
So how can you buy ASIC readily? If we talk about decentralised system, then ASICS.
People with videocards moving with litecoins is market self-adjusting to unfair competition conditions.
BTW - if you have a small ASIC avaliable i'm buying it.
Also, as soon as GOX starts exchanging litecoins, the market avaliable for them will skyrocket drastically, since merchants would be payed in FIAT anyways.

I don't see this as currently being true.  Most of the ASICs that you can have right now are going for quite a lot of Bitcoin.  This is probably a small amount for someone that had been into it or mining before this year but otherwise is an initial barrier to entry.

On top of that, if someone did want to start right now and buy into Bitcoin to buy an ASIC, they are losing the ability to hedge their "bet" on the ability to re-sell gpu hardware which Scrypt mining currently provides.

I think that aspect of Litecoins, along with the fact that new speculators saw what Bitcoin did and now see Litecoin at a "low" pricepoint (in USD/coin) could combine to make Litecoins quite disruptive to Bitcoins - but contribute to overall growth of cryptocurrency.

BTC and LTC are somewhat risky, but I do think LTC will hopefully increase in value very much eventually.