LiteCoin Development Efforts

While I have known about BitCoin for a while; I did not get into it until recently. Once I fired up a few GPUs and realized that it was basically a futile effort to generate anything of substance because of the headstart most people had on me; I decided to look into LiteCoin. I don't know if it is going to be successful; however, it is interesting and I like the position the developers have taken on it being "silver" to BitCoin "gold". In a desire to help the community grow around LiteCoin, I would like to offer some of my developer skills. I am a C# and PHP developer (I hold a Masters in Science and program for a living). I am looking to the community for some ideas on how to put my skills to work. I've thought about coding up a shopping cart or a plugin for nopCommerce, an auction site, etc. However, I think the community at large will be better equipped to decide what is needed. Any ideas? I am open to anything. Also, I am a fan of team work, so this doesn't have to be a project just for me. I would love to have help.

Thank you for the link Grin

I'm interested in investing in Lite Coin mining equipment, but the looming ASIC release has me timid to do so. I am worries all of the GPUs will switch over making it profitless. Hopefully that is not the case, if so I might jump in!

I was under the impression that mining specifically for litecoin or namecoin did not make sense anymore because the exchange value with bitcoin is directly coupled with the difference in difficulty for mining both. Did I get that wrong?

Quote

My assumption is that when difficulty goes up, the price will go up to.

+1. Basic economics.

realityenigma, mining is not a get rich quick scheme. If you want bitcoins or litecoins then you have to buy them or invest a lot in mining. But don't expect to become rich just by running a program in your computer...

Quote from: Chaang Noi (Goat) ช้างน้อย on September 28, 2012, 07:26:51 AM

Quote from: Crypto_Man on September 28, 2012, 07:14:09 AM

My assumption is that when difficulty goes up, the price will go up to.

Trolling? 0/10

it's like saying smoking is caused by cancer Roll Eyes

If LTC is going to become silver to BTC gold, then I think it would be useful to be able to see all holdings on a single display. No One has yet coded a wallet that displays your BTC and LTC holdings togtehr in the same place. I think this would be useful and if it is a good wallet, will encourage people to look into LTC.

Quote from: Chaang Noi (Goat) ช้างน้อย on September 29, 2012, 04:25:13 AM

Difficulty won't go up unless price goes up. (or at least economic incentive)

This argument makes very little sense. Difficulty is strictly linked to the TH/s effort the miners are putting into generating new BTC blocks with an optimal target of 2016 blocks of 50BTC/block every 2 weeks (100,800 BTC or 7,200 BTC/day). If tomorrow the mining effort double, the difficulty will be adjusted in order to reach the 2016 blocks/2 weeks target with a maximum increase of 4-fold per adjustment period. This is a rather clever approach since it will allow for a reasonably steady BTC mining over the years.

Difficulty is not only influenced by price. If ASIC hots BTC then there will be a lot of GPU miners who cant make anything mining BTC and will be likely to switch to LTC. This will make difficulty skyrocket but may not have any impact on price!

Is litecoin still being developed? I see the last commit was a few months ago:
https://github.com/coblee/litecoin/commits/master

Did somebody else take over development?

Quote from: FrogBBQ on September 29, 2012, 06:20:43 PM

Quote from: Chaang Noi (Goat) ช้างน้อย on September 29, 2012, 04:25:13 AM

Difficulty won't go up unless price goes up. (or at least economic incentive)

What he was trying to say is.. once mining hits an equilibrium.. a level where it is JUST profitable enough to maintain current levels.. at that point difficulty is theoretically determined by price.

If price drops, people would quit mining that coin and difficulty follows.. if the price increases.. then difficulty starts to go up as people buy more hardware or turn back on hardware.

This occurs until that equilibrium is reached again.

It's not as simple as that as many miners have very low or nil electricity costs. They do however, have an initial outlay cost, so it's always going to be worth their while to continue mining, regardless of difficulty!

If you leave in an economic vacuum maybe, but this is not the case. With the USD being more or less debased as with speak with the Fed doing quantitative easing to infinity (printing money ex nihilo), the value of BTC will increase since USD is becoming less and less valuable every day. This is irrelevant of bitcoin mining difficulty or not.

Another example would be that with the current raging currency war going on, it will suffice that one large country accept BTC for international payment (instead of USD or EUR) to see its value increase.

If everything would be that predictable then I do not think that BTC mining or bitcoin altogether make any sense. It is because of the intrinsic nature of bitcoin as an alternative currency and the way it was designed that make it interesting and worth thinking/investing about.

Who knows, when the USD loses its status of international currency, BTC may be part of the pool of currencies and assets that will make the new one. This in itself will give a whole new meaning for BTC with immediate consequences on its value.

BTC is not so much a currency at present, but more of a medium for exchange. Therefore, it is almost irrelevant how many coins are mined, if the block reward halves or if difficulty increases, this will have limited impact on price.

This is not a supply and demand situation as there are plenty of coins availaible from existing supplies!

Quote from: Monkey1 on September 30, 2012, 05:47:13 AM

It's not as simple as that as many miners have very low or nil electricity costs.

huh? how so?

Quote from: Monkey1 on September 30, 2012, 03:51:18 PM

Wait a second, not a currency yet I can exchange it for USD, EUR, Yen or buy stuff and services with it.

It is like saying that during the roman empire gold was not a currency because so much more gold has been mined since then. Nonsense really.

The finite number of coin is what is the most relevant and important thing with bitcoin, the very heart of its success is based on the fact it is a de facto limited supply of 21 million units. Without this, why would people even bother with such currency to start with.

Quote from: AlexWhite on September 30, 2012, 01:46:48 AM

Is litecoin still being developed? I see the last commit was a few months ago:
https://github.com/coblee/litecoin/commits/master

Did somebody else take over development?

That's something worries me and prevents me from making a full-scale investment in LTC.

It still seems like the best alternative at this point. I'm guessing development will pick up again soon since so many people are getting in to it and the motivation to keep it up to date is there.

I think that an important question is if there is any need for other electronic currencies really. In the end, what is there to gain in having another? The decentralization nature of bitcoin makes it, by nature, global. There will be no imprint of any government on it (like precious metals). This makes bitcoin a very valuable medium of exchange. What another currency will bring extra? I have no idea.

In fact, I hope that all the other electronic currencies that are currently being mined are not, at heart, a geek effect about mining for the sake of mining without real forward thinking about what to do with this. It would be a waste to only focus on the mining part of electronic currency since Bitcoin mining is only an infinitesimal aspect of the bitcoin economy. If this currency persist and become more prevalent, most will have bought their bitcoin with currencies, not mined them.