Why is litecoin hyped so much when it doesn't add any value over bitcoin?

[fenican]

Right now, even if you pay thousands of dollars and wait 1 year, it doesn't even guarantee you'll get an ASIC. It means that the next 50% of Bitcoin distribution (since we are around half-way there) is going to go into the hands a few elites

This is the problem with Bitcoin

A few guys lucky enough to get early Avalon units and all those BFL units that never shipped are minting money while everyone else is being diluted

No way to compete with these guys other than to boycott BTC until such time that ASICS are widely available for purchase at reasonable cost

GPU miners are understandably angry at the non-availability of ASICS units.  I don't blame them for widely disseminating the superiority, real or imagined, of LTC

Control of the network by a tiny fraction of ASICS miners is, I dare say, a real and severe liability for BTC - almost as bad as fiat.  This will be resolved eventually but the situation right now is extremely painful

[seleme]

It will never be resolved. By time ASICswould be available and affordable to anyone or close to it, there will be small group of people who is already going to control a huge portion of bitcoin value.

Bitcoin community is pretty much reflecting the real world, fiat one, one that is supposedly hate a lot.

[illpoet]

here's my arguement: i <3 litecoins

[coinerd]

...Except you just can't upgrade the entire BTC blockchain, you'll need a new coin...

If the POW algorithm is broken, you don't need to "upgrade the entire blockchain" and you don't need a new coin.

You checkpoint, and re-template.  If you can distribute the client ahead of time and target a block for the template change, it wouldn't even technically be a fork.  Even though it's popular to call such changes "a hard fork" right now.

If the ECDSA is broken (address crypto), new coin time.

[DeathAndTaxes]

If the ECDSA is broken (address crypto), new coin time.

Not necessary. 
Develop a new address type based on an alternate public key system. 
Bitcoin addresses have versioning prefix these new addresses would have an alternate prefix. 
Get miner support for verification of new address type. 
Release new client which will verify transactions involving new address type but not allow their creation.
Once sufficient % of miners and nodes are on the new client release a new version which allows creation of new address type.
Users download new client and transfer their balance from old (deprecated) ECDSA based addresses to new addresses.

Now this assumes there is sufficient time but the history of cryptographic breaks has been slow with the time from theoretical flaw to real world exploit measures in multiples years (often decade or more).

[coinerd]

If the ECDSA is broken (address crypto), new coin time.

Not necessary. 
Develop a new address type based on an alternate public key system. 
Bitcoin addresses have versioning prefix these new addresses would have an alternate prefix. 
Get miner support for verification of new address type. 
Release new client which will verify transactions involving new address type but not allow their creation.
Once sufficient % of miners and nodes are on the new client release a new version which allows creation of new address type.
Users download new client and transfer their balance from old (deprecated) ECDSA based addresses to new addresses.

Now this assumes there is sufficient time but the history of cryptographic breaks has been slow with the time from theoretical flaw to real world exploit measures in multiples years (often decade or more).

When was the last time that there was a multi-billion dollar "prize fund" broken into small pieces and made available to anyone who had

    A) an internet connection

    and

    B) understanding of the exploit

with no need for entry, confirmation, or waiting around for prize distribution at all?

Not to be combative with you at all. 

I just think that's pretty hilarious. Someone, knowing they would never get it all to exchanges before the whole blockchain was written off, might share their tools just for shits and giggles.  Whether they did or not, The entire market cap of BTC would probably vaporize faster than you can say "C++ For Dummies" because absolutely not a single soul would relinquish a penny of fiat for it after that.

Not "moved to bank accounts" or "safe in exchange accounts" or anything. Just freaking vaporized.  If this is a few years down the road, it could be the first "fully distributed" economic event on a par with a whole first world economy crashing.

I've had some amusing thoughts about the amount of money that is probably brute-forcing ECDSA into rainbow tables  right now.  I'm tempted to start. But an announced flaw in the crypto would start a rush we may not even be able to envision. 

I've never really thought that through in context before.  It's always all chatter about securing the blockchain, heh.

I can't shake the picture of a bunch of rednecks sitting in a fishing boat with beers and laptops trying to sort out cryptography and programming "reeeeeeeaaaaaal quick".

[fenican]

Good luck creating that rainbow table.  You should be able to start spending other people's BTC about the time the universe experiences heat death

[coinerd]

Good luck creating that rainbow table.  You should be able to start spending other people's BTC about the time the universe experiences heat death

Let me point out that sometimes you find a block in the second hash.

Let me add that every day as you map another tiny percentage of the available address space, thousand of people are out there adding addresses as well.

People seem to think of this as a "race to the finish line" but it's not at all.  It's a "treasure hunt" within a very large but finite space and people are burying new trunks of gold every day.

I don't have to space to store more tables than I could generate in a day or two.  I'm just saying.

Maybe we need a new game in town.  We can call it the "AWS Free Micro Instance Lottery" with a new drawing every .000000001 seconds and you get to play for the first year free. Prizes range from nothing to what, say 10m? 100m?  Are all of the satoshi bitcoins in one account?

It's real popular it's just, you know, sort of like the fight club...

EDIT: I wish I could get stats on how many new AWS micros come on line in the next 48 hours....

[DeathAndTaxes]

Your clueless.  This so called "large but finite space" is so large that ....

if you converted all the matter in our solar system into a giant super computer and used all the power output of our sun for the next 4 billions years until it burned out you couldn't count to 2^256.   This assumes the computer operated at the themodynamic limit.  In essence a perfect solar system sized super computer.  That is just counting 1, 2, 3, .... 2^256.  You could maybe at absolute perfect efficiency get to ~2^216 which would mean you have counted through less than 1/100,000th of 1% of possible private keys.

[coinerd]

Your clueless.  This so called "large but finite space" is so large that ....

It's not mine, sorry.

if you converted all the matter in our solar system into a giant super computer and used all the power output of our sun for the next 4 billions years until it burned out you couldn't count to 2^256.   This assumes the computer operated at the themodynamic limit.  In essence a perfect solar system sized super computer.  That is just counting 1, 2, 3, .... 2^256.  You could maybe at absolute perfect efficiency get to ~2^216 which would mean you have counted through less than 1/100,000th of 1% of possible private keys.

I'll bite.  Since you know exactly how long these sort of things take, tell me how many hashes it will take to find the next block in the bitcoin blockchain.

Come on man it was a joke.  My AWS micro is busy with something else right now.  But if you troll me into defending it, I will.  It's not impossible.  Improbable never stopped us yet.

[r3wt]

Your clueless.  This so called "large but finite space" is so large that ....

It's not mine, sorry.

if you converted all the matter in our solar system into a giant super computer and used all the power output of our sun for the next 4 billions years until it burned out you couldn't count to 2^256.   This assumes the computer operated at the themodynamic limit.  In essence a perfect solar system sized super computer.  That is just counting 1, 2, 3, .... 2^256.  You could maybe at absolute perfect efficiency get to ~2^216 which would mean you have counted through less than 1/100,000th of 1% of possible private keys.

I'll bite.  Since you know exactly how long these sort of things take, tell me how many hashes it will take to find the next block in the bitcoin blockchain.

Come on man it was a joke.  My AWS micro is busy with something else right now.  But if you troll me into defending it, I will.  It's not impossible.  Improbable never stopped us yet.

+1