Bitcoin Forum

There are threads here all the time accusing alt coins of being mere copies that add nothing innovative and are therefore completely useless, "scamcoins", just diluting the value of serious coins ... and many times these people are Litecoin defenders, they call to arms: defend Litecoin! Stand by Litecoin! Forget all these other clones ...

Go read the original Litecoin thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47417.0

You will have a deja-vu ... when coblee posted it, people objected with the exact same arguments! (No innovation, just copy (of fairbrix/tenebrix), pump n dump, only used to dilute value of BTC ...)

 ;D

Yes sir :) 

Time passed by and people forgot that.

Yes.
Now it's time to remember.

I didn't.  I still think they apply to LTC, and find it unlikely that LTC will ever have more than a niche use, particularly if it ever grows valuable enough to justify the development and manufacture of ASICs for Scrypt mining.  And don't tell me that it can't happen, it most certainly can.

The reduced block interval isn't novel, and would prove to be a hiderance in the long run.

That doesn't mean that it's not profitable to trade in the meantime, nor that it can't work, I just don't think that the market will ever have a greater than niche place for it.

It might not be litecoin (and it probably won't), but if cryptocurrencies survive over the long term I doubt we will still be using bitcoin, there is just too many things that can be improved, and transactions takes far too long.

Well, there is something problematic about creating a coin which does not present something unique. In case of Litecoin it was the first real scrypt bitcoin clone, that what mattered at this point.
There were also Geistgeld, tenebrix, fairbrix, etc... based on scrypt which never made it. But Litcoin did because it had the right combination of features.

Now the question is what are the right features?  Do you think that specially awarding zero day adopters ("super blocks") is it? I think not...
Changing the amount of units and or rate isn't something distinctive because the supply is homogeneous.

When it comes down to it what counts is actual programming and the ability to do so for maintaining the code to innovate.

Great thoughts, but I disagree with the last statement. To the public, programming isn't the top priority. My mom simply wants to go to a store, use one of her cards and go on with her day. Functionality, public interest and ability to keep the tech solid is what will matter in the end.

But you guys keep forgeting that Bitcoin is not static, it has solutions to those problems, even (relatively) secure zero-comfirmation transactions.  The alt-coin section of this forum exists, in part, because anything that pops up that is particularly novel can be incorporated into the exiting bitcoin codebase, if desired.  There is also an entire class of transaction types in Bitcoin that have not even been implimented yet, like blockchain enforcable contracts, that really don't have any equivilance in any alt-coin I've explored.  For an alt-coin to ever challenge Bitcoin for the top spot, either and unfixable flaw in Bitcoin will be discovered or an alt-coin develops with a novel advantage over Bitcoin that, for whatever reason (technicall, political) cannot be intergrated into bitcoin itself.  Small tweeks aren't going to cut it, it's going to have to be something as big a leap as Bitcoin's blockchain was to precursers such as hash-cash; or it will always be a distant second.

Seriously? There is literally, a new coin released each day..

To have implemented functionality you need to code, it's that simple.

As a newbie to cryptocurrencies I think we are in a amazing situation, we watch (or are part of) kind a ultra high speed evolution. Some coins might die, some others might find their niches and survive but the important part is that this creates a ecosystem for new developments and ideas, like namecoin or curecoin for instance. I think this is just the beginning, the really amazing things are still to come.

For now...

BCX, you know better than to lie about this.

coblee..... the original miner ;-)