The Big Decentralized Alts (DOGE, LTC and XMR) - Speculation

[fmz89]

those coin already spreaded to many holder, and ltc mostly for chinese money laundry, xmr gain adoption in darkweb and already used widely,
while doge became musk toy and us retail adoption, the gold standar meme  but its already hit beyond sky and only small room to growth
while xmr banned in may country cus privacycoin, while ltc seem quite ok in the future

[tygeade]

those coin already spreaded to many holder, and ltc mostly for chinese money laundry, xmr gain adoption in darkweb and already used widely,
while doge became musk toy and us retail adoption, the gold standar meme  but its already hit beyond sky and only small room to growth
while xmr banned in may country cus privacycoin, while ltc seem quite ok in the future

I do agree that it sounds like they all got enough attention as it is and the rankings show that they are not ranked badly neither. I understand that they are not in the top 10 mostly, but even if not that is fine, they do not have to be high at the top, they all liked by one party of community or the other. They are not going away anywhere anytime soon, they all did what they promised to do and that's enough for it.

The fact that bull run is around the corner and in a year or so we are going to start seeing huge increases, would make sure that everything will be as normal as it gets for a long time and won't create any chaos at all. I understand that it may not be that great for the time being, but it can still do fine.

[tokeweed]

As for LTC, held some before but never really cared about it.  Didn't buy the silver to BTC's gold argument.  I thought and still think it's dumb.

I think the "silver to BTC's gold" argument could make sense if LTC continues to experiment with features which are too controversial to add to BTC, like it did with MWEB. Maybe there's a possibility something like Simplicity could added to LTC (a language supporting more expressive smart contracts); that's a feature I'm pretty eager about for BTC but it may make sense to add it first to LTC. Basically, "silver to BTC's gold" would then mean: a bit more experimental and volatile and thus less valuable, but nevertheless a solid asset/currency.

If you want more expressive smart contracts why not just use ETH?  I know there's a lot of hate for VB and ETH around these parts but ETH and its roll ups seem to work fine for what I need which these days is mostly just trading memecoin stuff and just play around DeFi stuff.

But the MWEB thing is interesting.  I will check it out.

[d5000]

If you want more expressive smart contracts why not just use ETH?  I know there's a lot of hate for VB and ETH around these parts but ETH and its roll ups seem to work fine for what I need which these days is mostly just trading memecoin stuff and just play around DeFi stuff.

For memecoins and "so-called DeFi" (which isn't decentralized) ETH is indeed a good choice. Even if memecoins do not need smart contracts (turing complete) at all. In BTC-style coins they work with OP_RETURN or the controversial (and quite inefficient) BRC-20 format, which for example was adopted also by a part of the LTC community (as "LTC-20").

But Bitcoin-style smart contracts, which would work better with Simplicity, work different than ETH's, so they're covering a different niche. There's normally no single smart contract owner, instead all parties involved own parts of the smart contract, i.e. they control different transactions, while in ETH normally it's one single monolithic smart contract transaction. Take Lightning, atomic swaps, discreet log contracts, decentralized options ... If LTC adopted Simplicity, and perhaps covenants (which would allow rollups) much of what's become possible on ETH would become possible there too, only in the Bitcoin-style, non-monolithic fashion.

And then there is the issue that ETH itself is not really decentralized. While it has improved, the founders and the foundation have still enough power to prevent protocol changes they don't want to support.

[d5000]

I think it's time for a little update on the state of things regarding the three major decentralized altcoins.

First, let's talk about Monero (XMR). Coingecko shows us an interesting pattern: it was, in the last 90 days, almost 100% pegged to Bitcoin, following all of BTC's ups and (mostly) downs. There are only short term significative variations: so when bitcoin dipped from the 29k to the 26k level, Monero went up for some days, but then returning to the mean fastly, which is between 0.0054 and 0.0056 BTC.

Monero was in the past indeed one of the most stable altcoins, but this level of "peg" is surprising. I think there are good reasons to think this could be continue. However, that could change if Bitcoin turns bullish again. I would expect a price increase with respect to BTC in this case.


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Litecoin (LTC) instead suffered a major crash around and after its block reward halving date in August. In late August, after a bearish "glide", a single selloff event crashed it down into the 60-70$ area, or 0.0024-0.0025 in BTC. Since then however, it hovers around these values in a quite stable manner, and there were no major variations neither compared to the USD nor to BTC.

My guess for the following months is here that the further price development could be very dependant on the general market sentiment. If the market turns bullish, I guess LTC could recover even more than BTC. In the case of a continuation of the sideways market however it's not unlikely that we see another dip even compared to BTC. Anyway, I think surpassing the 0.0025 mark would imo trigger probably an uptrend, and the 0.00238 low should be held to prevent another dip.
 
In general terms I continue to think that LTC is long term undervalued, as it's a currency with a significant regular usage.


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Dogecoin (DOGE) had a similar selloff as LTC in late August, however it "only" crashed until the mid-year levels after a short uptrend in late July and early August. It then stabilized, but still is in a very slight bearish trend.

I think DOGE is the most speculative of all three decentralized alts. I have several times thought its time as a memecoin was over, but it surprised me a lot of times with new heights, in particular in the era when everybody and their grandpa traded Elon Musk's tweets. So while in my opinion it's maybe the coin with the least positive long term outlook (as it's used a lot less for transactions than LTC, for example, despite its reputation as a "tipping" cryptocurrency) I don't rule out that it can surprise me again and, for example, passes the 10 cent mark again eventually. For example, there's a real possibility for it to form a double bottom pattern. It continues to be a coin for gamblers


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[wheelz1200]

The issue with DOGE is that there are just way too many bag holders who listened to Musk.

This is indeed also the problem I have with DOGE. It's too dependant on Musk's tweets/actions. My stance for now is, as I don't believe it will really get major adoption inside the Twitter universe: Let it sleep a bit, once people forgot about Musk it may become again a good investment option. (And the project should really think about updating its code to a "modern" codebase with Segwit/Taproot.)

Another issue is the massive miner supply. There is still a huge amount of DOGE released daily that its capping the max price of Doge. Its not possible for it to sustain $1 or $5 long term due to massive miner dumping Doge as soon as their blocks mature.

I believe this is actually a good thing, there's a "roof" created by the miners which decreases volatility at least a little bit. Not good for traders and bagholders, but better for the long-term viability. The issue with $1 or $5 is that this "looks" like it was still a low price, but it would be an enormous increase  (a ~x15 to ~x75) from the current value. Its large supply distorts expectations a bit, as people have a tendency to associate the value with its price per unit (coin) and not so much with market cap. So I think unfortunately it won't go to such a market cap value sustainably, taking into account the current state of the project (old codebase, Musk bagholders ..)

As for LTC, held some before but never really cared about it.  Didn't buy the silver to BTC's gold argument.  I thought and still think it's dumb.

I think the "silver to BTC's gold" argument could make sense if LTC continues to experiment with features which are too controversial to add to BTC, like it did with MWEB. Maybe there's a possibility something like Simplicity could added to LTC (a language supporting more expressive smart contracts); that's a feature I'm pretty eager about for BTC but it may make sense to add it first to LTC. Basically, "silver to BTC's gold" would then mean: a bit more experimental and volatile and thus less valuable, but nevertheless a solid asset/currency.

How is the endless block rewards of 10,000 doge every minute a good thing?  It's literally one of the pillars of crypto and why this experiment was created to combat endless "printing"   demand will forever have to increase otherwise your buying power will always decrease.  Why would ypu hold doge long term?

[d5000]

How is the endless block rewards of 10,000 doge every minute a good thing?  It's literally one of the pillars of crypto and why this experiment was created to combat endless "printing"   demand will forever have to increase otherwise your buying power will always decrease.  Why would ypu hold doge long term?

In addition to what I wrote in the post before, I invite you to read about the theories and arguments about a "tail supply" (and why for example XMR has adopted such a scheme).

Even if there is "endless" "printing" of 10.000 DOGE per block, this means that, in comparison to the supply, the inflation (i.e. the equation "newly printed coins" / "available coin supply") is lower in each block*, even if there is no halving. This is because the newly printed amount is constant, while the supply increases, so the equation result in a lower value for each block.

"Demand will forever have to increase" would only be true if there were no lost coins at all. Lost coins however are happening constantly. And even if there were no lost coins, as I wrote the demand surplus needed would decrease with each block. Doge inflation is currently 3.727% per year, next year it will be 3.59%, and so reducing over time (in comparison, BTC has 1,5 and decreasing currently, but will sharply reduce to 0,7 next year; that looks better for hodlers of course, but also is a bit an obstacle for "as a currency" adoption).

Doge's tail supply also ensures its long-term security as there's always a reward for miners, and it may even have positive benefits for LTC's security (and thus its price evolution), because LTC's reward lowers like Bitcoin's, but as both coins are merged mined, a LTC miner will always be able to receive DOGE, and vice versa, so it's rational always for miners to mine both.

That's actually what the famous "Stock to flow" theory is all about, and it's the part I agree with - but they build a complete price theory around that concept with a predicted price evolution without taking into account demand, which I think is pseudocientific (in short: because scarcity != supply, scarcity == supply / demand).