Bitcoin Forum

Well, I am not sure which of these two currencies will win out in the end. The levels as of today on 4/17/2013 at 02:45 (GMT) are:

BTC: 65
LTC: 1.80032
LTC/BTC ratio: 0.02777

The only thing staying relatively constant is the LTC/BTC ratio. Like it or not, it seems that the two are intertwined. I have a strong feeling that once the ASICs come out, BTC value will erode while litecoins will either stand still or perhaps go up as miners move out of BTC and move into alternative (bit)currencies. This also implies that the LTC/BTC ratio will increase, but perhaps matter less as bitcoins fall in value.

It would appear that more and more hash based currencies are popping up, but I think it is very unlikely that they will catch on primarily because there is little innovation. This is assuming that something new doesn't come along which pushes GPUs out of the picture. I think it would be very interesting if a currency came out that basically excluded GPUs, FPGAs and ASICs from the picture. Perhaps a variant on scrypt that used more memory than GPUs could muster.

Just my 0.000002 bitcoins worth.

Donations for my thoughts are always welcome:

LTC: LMfeJwB4RLMEhkCEzi7vawdCJVA5gLChYx
BTC: 162zC8bff81txGpP5U6WyHjbesDtNp1AqQ

sorry for ignorance, but can you explain the ASICS part?

tks

I am really thinking that LTC will increase in value vs BTC. The lack of viable FPGA or ASIC for scrypt will keep hashing more distributed, with a higher trust, and harder 51% attack.

Or at some point do you think they will all merge together to form a single currency? (Or is that not technically feasible)

I'm going with the ratio of market caps: http://dustcoin.com/mining

At the time of this post, 465155/11043350 ~ 0.04. Therefore, we would "appear" to be slightly undervalued LTC wise?

An ASIC is an "Application Specific Integrated Circuit" which is basically an integrated circuit (i.e., chip) that is built for a specific task. It is more specific than a general purpose CPU, more specific than a GPU, even more specific than even an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and basically the best you can do to solve a particular task using electronics that can fit on one chip (or set of chips).

The problem with ASICs is that if you want to change any part of how it performs its function, you have to create a new one. Therefore, companies often spend millions on the initial design/debugging prior to actually producing them, making the entire enterprise cost prohibitive for the average person (unlike FPGAs that can actually be purchased and programmed by a well versed individual).

I hope that clears things up for you.

Just my 0.000002 bitcoins worth.

Donations for my thoughts are always welcome:

LTC: LMfeJwB4RLMEhkCEzi7vawdCJVA5gLChYx
BTC: 162zC8bff81txGpP5U6WyHjbesDtNp1AqQ

I have been thinking on the same topic for a few days now (which is really the extent of my bitcoin thinking alltogether). I have debated back and forth on weather to mine Litecoin or Bitcoin. Right now I am mining Bitcoin, only because it is more mainstream. I am thinking about moving over, any suggestions on any changes I will need to make if I do make the transition?

great explanations. thank you very much
as soon as I buy ltc, i'll make a small symbolic donation

Well, all I can say is that at the moment LTC mining using a GPU more profitable. Whether this trend continues going forward is anybody's guess.

Just my 0.000002 bitcoins worth.

Donations for my thoughts are always welcome:

LTC: LMfeJwB4RLMEhkCEzi7vawdCJVA5gLChYx
BTC: 162zC8bff81txGpP5U6WyHjbesDtNp1AqQ

Right now mining LTC with similar hardware will get you about 1.4 times the profit, due to the difficulty. Then you can use BTC-E to convert LTC to BTC.

Hmmmm...So what do I need to do to get up and running on LTC mining? (BTW I am doing GPU mining at around 200 MH/s)

Tell us which GPU (Nvidia or AMD) you are using and we'll help you out.

On the forums here there is a gui scrypt miner (LTC uses a different hashing algorithm) and just download it, and run it like you do GUI miner for BTC. I suggest give-me-ltc.com/ for a LTC pool.

I second the choice of give-me-ltc.com for a pool. They do charge a 2% pool fee, but I've had nothing but good luck with them being (and paying) up. Basically, as soon as you accumulate 1 LTC, they deposit it to your address (sometimes within 2 hours of hitting 1 LTC, but they are reliable).

It's a AMD 7770. Right now I am using bfgMiner, and am not afraid of CLIs. I do like the realtime data that it gives and all the options for fallback pools etc. Is there something like that for LTC?

For AMD GPUs the best way to mine litecoins is CGMiner. Here is a link to a forum post with a link to the actual software:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.0)

Just my 0.000002 bitcoins worth.

Donations for my thoughts are always welcome:

LTC: LMfeJwB4RLMEhkCEzi7vawdCJVA5gLChYx
BTC: 162zC8bff81txGpP5U6WyHjbesDtNp1AqQ

Looking through the feature list of bfgMiner, it looks like it has scrypt support. So do I just add the LTC pool like the BTC pools I added?

In mine experience reaper works equally well or better...? At least for 7xxx

i've tryed it and is ok

LOL, someone just sent me a 0.00000005 BTC donation. I had to use the mouse to count the zeroes, there were so many of them. Who knows, in another 10^33 years I might be able to buy a mouse pad.

Just my 0.000002 bitcoins worth.

Donations for my thoughts are always welcome:

LTC: LMfeJwB4RLMEhkCEzi7vawdCJVA5gLChYx
BTC: 162zC8bff81txGpP5U6WyHjbesDtNp1AqQ

I think we are watching some kind of extreme high speed evolution. New coins are popping up, some of them new and unique like Namecoin, while others perish. Terracoin was close the end but came out stronger than ever, at least for the moment, and even straight clones like Bytecoin or BBQCoin might find their niche and survive.

In the end it might be worth to spend a little time on mining less prominent coins. You can still mine them without high performance hardware, some even with CPU, and learn how solo mining and pools work. And who knows, maybe they are worth some serious money some day.

Those are exciting times and I think the real cool things are still to come. Concepts nobody (or almost nobody) thought about so far, like it happened with Bitcoin.

do you guys think this redundancy is a good thing, since the technology provides no new features?

too many other coins makes virtual currency sound kind of gimmicky, although i guess some people already think this is a gimmick no matter what

Chances are if Litecoin ever took off specialized hardware would arrive (albiet more complex). The Bitcoin clones were beat to market and won't gain market share. There are plenty of people who want to promote alternative currencies because they want to be an early adopter. Don't be fooled.

Ask yourself why everyone should switch? It would have to offer substantial intrinsic value over Bitcoin. That's not to say something won't arrive that offers additional value, but I don't think we've seen any of that yet.

I think litecoin's only real value is what people will lean it against bitcoin. The prices correlate with growth and loss, although exponentially litecoin has been doing well more recently. In the long run there will always be imitators, which you might be able to make money trading or investing, but ultimately they will probably be leaned on bitcoin, so why not just invest in the big guy if you think the future looks well.

I just got my first payout on give-me-ltc.com. Is it common to not get the full 1 LTC? I only got 0.99246693 LTC.

I think a lot of us myself included feel the same way and are moving or have moved hardware over.

Mining LTC bring lower profit than BTC at the moment

i find mining btc alot hard and less interesting them mining ltc.

using cgminer watching your ltc hash rate is like watching your bit torrent download speed.

very hypnotizing.