Bitcoin Forum

At the moment I think we could say that Bitcoin is to Litecoin what Gold is to Silver. Is it safe to assume they can co-exist? If not, why?

Can dollars, Euros and Yen coexist?

It would be safe to say that they can indeed coexist. In fact, it may prove to be the ideal situation. At the moment, BTC dominates in value and size of user base, but that could just be the "first to arrive" advantage.

Of course they can, just like fiats co-exist now.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192887.msg1998973#msg1998973 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=192887.msg1998973#msg1998973)

I think they can, but I'm not sure if either can survive in their current state with speculation crippling all crypto coin.

If I could buy a bag of bread with bitcoin, I would not because there's good chance tomorrow I can buy 2 bag of bread with the same amount.

And if I want to exchange my CAD for USD with the goal to do easy money, It won't be so easy but with alt coin and bitcoin I can do it very easily.

Just hoping the speculation to slow down a bit so we can have one or more true decentralized cryptocurrency in the future.

No, litecoin will die.

It offers ZERO advantage over bitcoin.

Bitcoin is highly divisible and is therefore both gold and silver.

You could have an alt coin with fast confirmations; making it useful for inperson "immediate" confirmation.

Which isn't 2+ minutes  ;)

It is surprisingly hard to kill a block chain once and for all. Look how easily BBQ was resurrected. That said, there will probably be some sort of shake-out in the long term with most of the systems being marginalized; every little XYZCoin ever started is not going to sweep the world.  The ones that prove the most useful in the long run will be the ones to endure. I do not presume to guess which ones will fulfill this destiny. Bitcoin has the advantage of a head start over the others, but this factor will lessen with time.

Actually, that is not completely accurate.

For example, Litecoin offers the ability to transfer value without there being a record in the Bitcoin blockchain and there being a record in the Litecoin blockchain. That is something Bitcoin cannot do.

Yeh definitely. It's great to see people innovating cryptocurrencies :)

I think their will always be multiple coins, but they will always be fighting for market-share and a natural 'king-of-the-hill' will exist at any one time due to the network-effect (the king is dead, long live the king), so while they WILL coexist, they do not naturally WISH to coexist.

Also anyone making comparisons to actual metals to answer this question is a fool.

They can coexist, but each new coin brings down the value of all others. It's a good thing they're all pretty much worthless, otherwise we'd have huge inflation.

Well you can't mine silver in a goldmine or LTC with bitcoin asics ...


Agreed, but it's nice to see that their poor argumentation wouldn't even work on metals either. I don't know how BTC could keep it's 95% marketshare.

More like 66% Market-share, at-least by my cumulative hourly mining revenue analysis.  Real goods and services it may be 95% but that market is in all likely-hood dwarfed by mining itself.

Of course. Litecoin would be a great intermediary between BTC and fiat for faster merchant confirmations, just off the top of my head.

Only if you coerce people to use them. Otherwise a better currency will push others off the market.

By marketshare I ment total worth of already mined coins in comparison to each other.
I approximated BTC~1bil and altcoin ~50mil-->95%, but I'm not aware of exact numers and belive the ratio is correct.
How did you calculate yours?

Comparing it with fiat doesn't quite get it right since nobody pays with USD in Europa and vice versa. Bitcoin btw isn't currency or commodity so it seems that crypto should be treated as it's own genre.

If there isn't any reason why bitcoin should keep it's monopoly I see no reason in assuming that it could.

They coexist today.

I think the risk coming from outside far out-weight their internally competition. A more relevant question is: What kind of factor in the future that may kill one system, but not the other?

Any altcoin that just copies BitCoin will die.

>> Can dollars, Euros and Yen coexist?

Fiat currencies coexists because they exist behind political boundaries. There is no such thing in BitCoin and altcoin world. On the Internet, everybody is the same. No boundary

>> You could have an alt coin with fast confirmations; making it useful for inperson "immediate" confirmation.

Not the "fastness" that you expect. Is Bitcoin is extremely slow and Litecoin is super-fast? No. The gap is too small. In practice, Litecoin brings no benefit over Bitcoin.

Litecoin will die

Do you feel the same way about all the "other"  linux distros? 


I'd like to see your scenario of predicted coin death.  Somebody will break scrypt?  BTC miners will turn their hardware onto scrypt and push the difficulty up and then flee?  Something else? 

 

>> Do you feel the same way about all the "other"  linux distros?

How do you compare a Linux distros and a currency? How do they look similar?  :o

>> Somebody will break scrypt?  BTC miners will turn their hardware onto scrypt and push the difficulty up and then flee?  Something else?  

It looks like that you are a technical guy. Miner? Developer? Bitcoin can gain wide adoption. Litecoin is just a copy of Bitcoin. Bitcoin will push LTC out of the market or it is accepted by a very small amount of people who are mining it. Please think as if you are an economist, who cares a currency that fails to gain wide adoption. Will it die?

I know, some people promote it because they are late to BTC game: get rich quick scheme. No more.

Well they aren't the same kind of codebase, but:

One can fork a linux distro, modify it, and release your own. 
One can fork a coin, modify it, and release your own.


Actually litecoin is a fork of bitcoin, not an exact copy.  It uses a different hash function called "Scrypt" for proof-of-work validation.  This means in theory that it will be harder for the guys with tons of SHA-256 equipment to control the coin.  There are some other cosmetic differences as well.   

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the crypto-currency ecosystem is well served by some diversity.   

Proof of work coins have a pulse, you can see if they are alive by looking for new blocks.  No new block = dead coin.  I guess you are right, if nobody wants the coins the value goes down, miners flee and are not even lured back by lower difficulty, and eventually you have a dead coin.     




 

As I observed on the litecoin forum they are very eager to embrace and take over illegal activities which are taking place actually in bitcoin.
It is a possible scenario that bitcoin will be more and more accepted and more recognized by governments and more analyzing mechanisms appear which could better reveal illegal transactions then most of the illegal activities will go to litecoin. May be because their network structure is also better suited to withstand government seizure of mining networks.
Bitcoin is more likely to go a way of partial cooperation with governments which can also guaranty an additional security against 51% attacks.
Principally I think that asic type mining has a better 51% withstand capability than scrypt mining if  the network is at least tolerated by the majority of governments. (because by asic mining it is a much higher hash power than by scrypt mining at the same investment)