LTC price justification

[lebing]

Am I the only one that sees a hideous crash in the not so distant future?

Besides the "Litecoin is silver to bitcoins gold" analogy (which I personally think is crap), what is the additional functionality a/o reason to support this currency over bitcoin?

[ShadowAlexey]

Because  there is no premine, it uses different algorithm, it lasted the longest time among all alternatives, and there always should be alternative to btc.

[tacotime]

Am I the only one that sees a hideous crash in the not so distant future?

yes

I don't care if the price crashes, it's crashed before, it will crash again... overall hoarding it is just making me lots of cash though because it tends to go up.

[cunicula]

Am I the only one that sees a hideous crash in the not so distant future?

Besides the "Litecoin is silver to bitcoins gold" analogy (which I personally think is crap), what is the additional functionality a/o reason to support this currency over bitcoin?

None. It will crash. The only worthwhile alternate coin is PPCoin. The rest are complete garbage.

[tacotime]

None. It will crash. The only worthwhile alternate coin is PPCoin. The rest are complete garbage.

ppcoin

[ElectricMucus]

The best part about this is: All you litecoin haters have none that you can sell off to drive the price down.  The only thing you can do is literally buy high and sell low which gonna cost you

[pyra-proxy]

Am I the only one that sees a hideous crash in the not so distant future?

Besides the "Litecoin is silver to bitcoins gold" analogy (which I personally think is crap), what is the additional functionality a/o reason to support this currency over bitcoin?

Concur the analogy is crap, mostly because the premise of relating bitcoin to gold to begin with is crap and shows lack of understanding of basic economics and knowledge of ***physics/metallurgy.... however, alternates are a good thing and one thing that litecoin does do for the time being is to expand the amount of hardware that can be added to the general cryptocurrency ecosystem, litecoin will be a valuable device for GPU miners particularly as they are pushed out of bitcoin at least until the price of litecoin is lucrative enough to warrant hardware manufacturers to start producing FPGAs and ASICs for this chain... that in and of itself makes litecoin a very valuable alternative at least for the short/mid term, and this is something no other current viable alt can claim.

***Gold has a literal finite number of atoms in existance and you cant get any smaller than a single atom of gold since partial atoms of gold is an impossibility as a "partial atom" would no longer be the original substance (think fission, where the newly split atoms are an entirely new substance different from the original and having entirely different properties from the original), whereas when bitcoiners are approached about the problem of when there are not enough coins to run a global economy the often regurgitated responses are that is far into the future or the decimal places can be shifted with client updates or some such.... the latter "solution" nullifies the argument that bitcoins have finite properties like gold.

[foggyb]

The only difference between bitcoin and altcoins is: it was here first. That's it.
Forget about block reward, forget about confirmations and proof of stake, those are just tweaks. Its nearly the same code.

There is no reason some altcoins can't have a future, unless bitcoin doesn't have one.

[ElectricMucus]

There is no reason some altcoins can't have a future, unless bitcoin doesn't have one.

Exactly.

[lebing]

There is no reason some altcoins can't have a future, unless bitcoin doesn't have one.

Exactly.

I get there is no reason why they can't have a future - the question is why should they?

[ElectricMucus]

There is no reason some altcoins can't have a future, unless bitcoin doesn't have one.

Exactly.

I get there is no reason why they can't have a future - the question is why should they?

Has been answered above. For litecoin it's the different algorithm, the possibility to hedge bitcoin selloffs (look at the exchange rate during the last ones.. etc)
Whenever that turns out to be true in the future... lets find out shall we?

[peepee]

I get there is no reason why they can't have a future - the question is why should they?

variety is the spice of life.  

[peepee]

The only worthwhile alternate coin is PPCoin.

Unless there is Win install available, it's going nowhere. None of 20+ miners I know of, including myself, will ever bother with compiling.

There is: https://github.com/ppcoin/ppcoin/downloads

and even if there wasn't, is compiling such a difficult task? compared to setting up a room full of loud ass computers and gpus and fans, generating the heat comparable to the fiery pits of hell, configuring mining software, and maintaining?  

[peepee]

Unless it can be easily found, it's like it does not exist. If you think that going to ppc.org > click download icon > open 0.2.2 folder
is easy, you are dead wrong.

and even if there wasn't, is compiling such a difficult task?

It makes no difference if it's easy or not - it's extra step for which I and all people I know of simply don't give a shit. If you want me
and those people, which represent majority of people on this planet, start using your application, the minimum requirement is to have
Win install for it. If you're offering non-critical product, you either go down to mediocre level, or you are ignored. It's simple as that.

first of all, it's not my application.

second of all, 

with that attitude, you're going to get left in the dust. and rightly so.. since to me, you're just a lazy ass. it's as simple as that.

[peepee]

It's general problem of developers and other hi-spec IT people - you are completely missing the perspective of average computer user.
On the other hand, I know it perfectly, since I use to deal with such users on a daily basis via computer shops and "for noobs" courses.
I'll tell you the truth - average guy out there never ever heard of sourceforge.net. If you'll make him go there and mess with folders, it
very likely he'll become suspicious and forget the deal the next second.

A.K.A. LAZY AS FUCK.

How many average computer users mine bitcoin? How many "noobs" mine bitcoin? How many noob bitcoiners know what sourceforge is?

 

straight lazy.

[peepee]

Compiling any *coin on windows sucks ass, did you do it?
Setting up MinGW is one of the most tiresome administration tasks there is. Beating a full gentoo installation anytime.

Totally besides the point since there IS a compiled version.

[peepee]

Yet you argued about it. What was that about anyway?

i didn't argue about it. my point is, if you're going to attempt to mine, don't be fucking lazy.

some people want it spoon-fed to them. better ask yo mommas.

[cunicula]

The only difference between bitcoin and altcoins is: it was here first. That's it.
Forget about block reward, forget about confirmations and proof of stake, those are just tweaks. Its nearly the same code.

There is no reason some altcoins can't have a future, unless bitcoin doesn't have one.

? bitcoin is just a tweak of hashcash, e-gold, etc.
facebook is just a tweak of myspace which is just a tweak of ...

Tweaks often make the difference between dramatic success and total failure.

[mem]

I like ltc, its quicker for gambling with but I cant see the current price holding either, its been on a decline since peaking at 10c.

ppcoin is interesting, but it needs a GUI client that shows off these new features it has.

[BlackBison]

Ive said it about 100x but I will say it again: if the concept of cryptocurrencies is truly revolutionary and here to stay, there almost certainly must be competing currencies in the space. If only for safety if nothing else. I do like the idea of PPC but I think it is too flawed to really succeed in its current state. But I welcome all the new ideas it is bringing forward that the oligarchal bitcoin core will not discuss properly as their system is just the best. 

In particular, bitcoin cannot be relied upon as the sole representative of crypto alone due to one potentially catastrophic design fault: satoshi chose the wrong hashing algorithm- SHA, when with hindsight it should have been something like scrypt right from the beginning.

This opens it up to a serious attack vector due to future technological advances. For example, if BFL or one of the other guys does indeed make a working ASIC then this opens up the 51% attack. Now I don't care about your usual poor 'it wouldn't be in their interests to 51% btc blah blah blah'. The weakness exists. Period.

What if someone were to break into their factory and steal all the chips then 51% the network? Sounds tinfoil now for sure as bitcoin is so insignificant. But what about in 5 or 10 years time if its a real threat to governments and banks etc? Due to the 'weak' algo at its heart we could have yet another exponential generation of ASIC-2 possible in 10 years time and the whole project could be killed in one move. Having several competing currencies ensures overall resiliency of the idea. Even if an asic could be built in the future to attack LTC it is unlikely that a malicious agent could build/aquire the means to attack all of LTC, BTC and PPC etc all at once.

In addition, we have the powerful argument that a set of competing cryptos would be better for the overall future of all involved, included btc. Competition between dev teams to further the technology or embrace new ideas will be very beneficial as compared to a slow and ponderous, unmotivated bitcoin only team due to no competition.

This is a refutation of the point of view that 'bitcoin is all that is needed, everything else is superflous'. If it had used a harder algo from the start then perhaps that would be almost true...