Do you think the rally is over now... or very soon?

[Chalkbot]

ridiculous a competitor coin rising in popularity will be at bitcoins expense. 

 
Not sure I followed this part.

That can happen tomorrow.

I don't deny that. If it did I would strongly consider diversification. I was only trying to illustrate that as far as alt-coins go, it's too late to claim the crown without some serious backing. There's no way to program in a huge (relatively speaking) user base, proven history, or widespread acceptance, so recognizable backing or critical failure are the only ways to potentially dethrone bitcoin as the leading crypto-currency in my mind.

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[sublime5447]

I love ween BTW. 

Limited market for digital currency if another coin gains market share it will be a btc expense. Personally I think LTC will grow and help regulate BTC's price. If LTC goes to 1 dollar and you can use them for anything you use BTC for then if there are 4 times as many LTC then BTC the price of BTC should be 4 bucks. Why buy BTC at 35 when you can get LTC for .07? Makes no sense. Only reason anyone buys BTC over LTC from me is they wanna buy some blow off SR.

[Piper67]

That is perfect just like we all know where this chart will lead so too will BTC.

Scenarios--- Us government tells japan they wont be bailed out unless they shut down gox, or japan decides to shut it down for violating currency laws, SR is infiltrated and is shut down, Sr announces it will start accepting LTC... any others fellow bears? When do people stop believing this lie? When did beanie babies go bust?, when did people realize pogs are just cardboard? When will people realize that BTC is just 1's and 0's that are worthless as anything other than money? and that it is easy to replicate? 

I love these occasional FUD posts, they keep the BTC/USD ratio in check so that corrections will not be needed so often 

I'm not sure this one is helping as I cannot even decipher what he is saying. Is he implying that US debt repayment is imminent? That Silk Road shutting down would have a dramatic effect on BTC price? That somehow switching to LTC would enable Silkroad to recover? That someone can just make copies of bitcoins? Huh?

You have to understand marco to know what I am saying. That fiat expansion chart will look like every other asset bubble chart. The debt expansion is the same thing as the money supply. It is going to collapse into a new great depression. I am saying US default is imminent, and yes Sr getting shut down will shut off about 23% of the market activity and that if SR accepts LTC it's price will rise and BTC will fall. I am not saying that BTC is easy to replicate but easy to imitate possibly with a better coin. 

The figures I've seen suggest Silk Road does about $250,000 a month. Even if every one of those coins was immediately bought/sold on the exchange, that represents about half of one percent of the volume of just one exchange (Gox) in that same time period.

Also, collapsing fiat makes bitcoin investing a good idea in my opinion. Sure there are other things you can store value in with a different set of pros/cons, but bitcoin serves the purpose well.

If Anyone accepts LTC, it is likely in addition to BTC at this point, not instead of. That would be silly. That's like a McDonalds store opening up in California that only accepts Pesos. Sure you *could* go there, but why? And what advantage would the owner of that store have by doing that?

In my opinion, the only way an alt-coin could potentially dethrone bitcoin at this stage is if it was backed by a company like Apple, Google, or Amazon.

Nah, even if they did, as long as there was a free floating exchange between BTC and the alt-coin, Bitcoin would still win.

[Chalkbot]

I love ween BTW. 

Limited market for digital currency if another coin gains market share it will be a btc expense. Personally I think LTC will grow and help regulate BTC's price. If LTC goes to 1 dollar and you can use them for anything you use BTC for then if there are 4 times as many LTC then BTC the price of BTC should be 4 bucks. Why buy BTC at 35 when you can get LTC for .07? Makes no sense. Only reason anyone buys BTC over LTC from me is they wanna buy some blow off SR.

Ween is the best band.

I can agree, to some extent, that if another alt-coin was accepted everywhere BTC was, it would take some market share from BTC, thus lowering the price. Despite the fact that it's somewhat of a chicken/egg scenario in terms of even gaining that amount of adoption. There is no reason the number of coins would have anything to do with their respective values, however. If LTC was $1, that just means they would respresent $1x<total number of LTC> of the total crypto coin market (currently ~$350,000,000). If that number is 4 times the number of BTC, lets call that 44 million LTC coins right now, then LTC is worth 44 million dollars of the total market, which would drop the price of a BTC to 29.50 from the current 33.50 ($368m -$44m / 11m BTC). The total market cap wouldn't shrink, like in your example, it stays roughly the same.

I feel like I didn't explain that very well, but whatever.

[mccorvic]

I love ween BTW. 

Limited market for digital currency if another coin gains market share it will be a btc expense. Personally I think LTC will grow and help regulate BTC's price. If LTC goes to 1 dollar and you can use them for anything you use BTC for then if there are 4 times as many LTC then BTC the price of BTC should be 4 bucks. Why buy BTC at 35 when you can get LTC for .07? Makes no sense. Only reason anyone buys BTC over LTC from me is they wanna buy some blow off SR.

LTC won't break any relevant price point as the "miners" who are interested in it will dump everything, move to a new currency, and be like "Oh this is what we use now. It's better. Please buy it".

[Chalkbot]

I love ween BTW. 

Limited market for digital currency if another coin gains market share it will be a btc expense. Personally I think LTC will grow and help regulate BTC's price. If LTC goes to 1 dollar and you can use them for anything you use BTC for then if there are 4 times as many LTC then BTC the price of BTC should be 4 bucks. Why buy BTC at 35 when you can get LTC for .07? Makes no sense. Only reason anyone buys BTC over LTC from me is they wanna buy some blow off SR.

LTC won't break any relevant price point as the "miners" who are interested in it will dump everything, move to a new currency, and be like "Oh this is what we use now. It's better. Please buy it".

My money's on mccorvi-coins!

[RodeoX]

Much better title. 

[Richy_T]

Much better title. 

Yet somehow along the lines of "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

[mccorvic]

I love ween BTW. 

Limited market for digital currency if another coin gains market share it will be a btc expense. Personally I think LTC will grow and help regulate BTC's price. If LTC goes to 1 dollar and you can use them for anything you use BTC for then if there are 4 times as many LTC then BTC the price of BTC should be 4 bucks. Why buy BTC at 35 when you can get LTC for .07? Makes no sense. Only reason anyone buys BTC over LTC from me is they wanna buy some blow off SR.

LTC won't break any relevant price point as the "miners" who are interested in it will dump everything, move to a new currency, and be like "Oh this is what we use now. It's better. Please buy it".

My money's on mccorvi-coins!

Smart man!

Anyone who wants a mccorvi-coin can send me BTC. I'll then bust out my colored pencils, sketch one up, and post it to you.

[molecular]

I love ween BTW. 

Limited market for digital currency if another coin gains market share it will be a btc expense. Personally I think LTC will grow and help regulate BTC's price. If LTC goes to 1 dollar and you can use them for anything you use BTC for then if there are 4 times as many LTC then BTC the price of BTC should be 4 bucks. Why buy BTC at 35 when you can get LTC for .07? Makes no sense. Only reason anyone buys BTC over LTC from me is they wanna buy some blow off SR.

LTC won't break any relevant price point as the "miners" who are interested in it will dump everything, move to a new currency, and be like "Oh this is what we use now. It's better. Please buy it".

My money's on mccorvi-coins!

Smart man!

Anyone who wants a mccorvi-coin can send me BTC. I'll then bust out my colored pencils, sketch one up, and post it to you.

what's the rate? Can I get a real paper one?

[Monster Tent]

That is perfect just like we all know where this chart will lead so too will BTC.

Scenarios--- Us government tells japan they wont be bailed out unless they shut down gox, or japan decides to shut it down for violating currency laws, SR is infiltrated and is shut down, Sr announces it will start accepting LTC... any others fellow bears? When do people stop believing this lie? When did beanie babies go bust?, when did people realize pogs are just cardboard? When will people realize that BTC is just 1's and 0's that are worthless as anything other than money? and that it is easy to replicate? 

I love these occasional FUD posts, they keep the BTC/USD ratio in check so that corrections will not be needed so often 

I'm not sure this one is helping as I cannot even decipher what he is saying. Is he implying that US debt repayment is imminent? That Silk Road shutting down would have a dramatic effect on BTC price? That somehow switching to LTC would enable Silkroad to recover? That someone can just make copies of bitcoins? Huh?

You have to understand marco to know what I am saying. That fiat expansion chart will look like every other asset bubble chart. The debt expansion is the same thing as the money supply. It is going to collapse into a new great depression. I am saying US default is imminent, and yes Sr getting shut down will shut off about 23% of the market activity and that if SR accepts LTC it's price will rise and BTC will fall. I am not saying that BTC is easy to replicate but easy to imitate possibly with a better coin. 

The figures I've seen suggest Silk Road does about $250,000 a month. Even if every one of those coins was immediately bought/sold on the exchange, that represents about half of one percent of the volume of just one exchange (Gox) in that same time period.

Also, collapsing fiat makes bitcoin investing a good idea in my opinion. Sure there are other things you can store value in with a different set of pros/cons, but bitcoin serves the purpose well.

If Anyone accepts LTC, it is likely in addition to BTC at this point, not instead of. That would be silly. That's like a McDonalds store opening up in California that only accepts Pesos. Sure you *could* go there, but why? And what advantage would the owner of that store have by doing that?

In my opinion, the only way an alt-coin could potentially dethrone bitcoin at this stage is if it was backed by a company like Apple, Google, or Amazon.

A country could do it. It only takes having a large enough reserve to back each coin and place a floor under the price.

[Piper67]

I love ween BTW. 

Limited market for digital currency if another coin gains market share it will be a btc expense. Personally I think LTC will grow and help regulate BTC's price. If LTC goes to 1 dollar and you can use them for anything you use BTC for then if there are 4 times as many LTC then BTC the price of BTC should be 4 bucks. Why buy BTC at 35 when you can get LTC for .07? Makes no sense. Only reason anyone buys BTC over LTC from me is they wanna buy some blow off SR.

LTC won't break any relevant price point as the "miners" who are interested in it will dump everything, move to a new currency, and be like "Oh this is what we use now. It's better. Please buy it".

My money's on mccorvi-coins!

Smart man!

Anyone who wants a mccorvi-coin can send me BTC. I'll then bust out my colored pencils, sketch one up, and post it to you.

As soon as someone works out how to send pizza rolls over the internets, I'll send you some 

[Richy_T]

What is the current exchange rate? And how many pizza bites to a pizza roll?

[Hexadecibel]

What is the current exchange rate? And how many pizza bites to a pizza roll?

2

[mccorvic]

So yeah, while Bitcoin can't be inflated from within, it's still susceptible external shocks. For now I'm happy that those shocks are pushing its exchange rate UP

This is why if LTC or any other alt-coin actually gains ground, even temporarily, all that will happen is completely undo BTC and all cryptocoin all together.  One of the major, if not THE major, advancement and promises of bitcoin is that it is resistant to inflation due to the hard cap of 21million. If, it turns out, any two-bit script kiddie with 5 friends can effectively do so by creating a sperg-coin or what have you then people will be fully capable of extrapolating and realize the whole experiment is a bust.

That said, I also think this is the exact reason that any alt-coin won't gain ground.  Enough people are smart enough to realize this and not fall for it.

[Monster Tent]

So yeah, while Bitcoin can't be inflated from within, it's still susceptible external shocks. For now I'm happy that those shocks are pushing its exchange rate UP

This is why if LTC or any other alt-coin actually gains ground, even temporarily, all that will happen is completely undo BTC and all cryptocoin all together.  One of the major, if not THE major, advancement and promises of bitcoin is that it is resistant to inflation due to the hard cap of 21million. If, it turns out, any two-bit script kiddie with 5 friends can effectively do so by creating a sperg-coin or what have you then people will be fully capable of extrapolating and realize the whole experiment is a bust.

That said, I also think this is the exact reason that any alt-coin won't gain ground.  Enough people are smart enough to realize this and not fall for it.

The majority of the bitcoin developers are statists and have no interest in making bitcoin more anonymous and hard to trace. There is a very good reason to have a competing currency that takes the opposite direction and has anonymity as its goal.

There are lots of things they could do to introduce these features but they are incentivised not to do so because of the larger bitcoin businesses who want less anonymity and more identification of users.

[mccorvic]

The majority of the bitcoin developers are statists and have no interest in making bitcoin more anonymous and hard to trace. There is a very good reason to have a competing currency that takes the opposite direction and has anonymity as its goal.

There are lots of things they could do to introduce these features but they are incentivised not to do so because of the larger bitcoin businesses who want less anonymity and more identification of users.

For the record, I'm dismissing pretty much all this out of hand. Plus, it does zero to refute any of my points.  You may not like the BTC developers and businesses, but the real world doesn't care who you like/don't like.

Another thing, even if bitcoin is $100 for one and LTC is $1 each it won't matter a lick.  If something is the equivilant of $100 USD you'll need either 1BTC or 100LTC. It's not like you some how get any sort of magical savings by going with the worthless alt-coin.

[molecular]

So yeah, while Bitcoin can't be inflated from within, it's still susceptible external shocks. For now I'm happy that those shocks are pushing its exchange rate UP

This is why if LTC or any other alt-coin actually gains ground, even temporarily, all that will happen is completely undo BTC and all cryptocoin all together.  One of the major, if not THE major, advancement and promises of bitcoin is that it is resistant to inflation due to the hard cap of 21million. If, it turns out, any two-bit script kiddie with 5 friends can effectively do so by creating a sperg-coin or what have you then people will be fully capable of extrapolating and realize the whole experiment is a bust.

That said, I also think this is the exact reason that any alt-coin won't gain ground.  Enough people are smart enough to realize this and not fall for it.

When talking about inflation we have to keep in mind there's inflation of the money supply (well-known in advance for bitcoin) and in-/defaltion of prices. Bitcoin makes no promise about prices, it just promises a certain pre-defined behaviour of it's money supply.

Now, talking about stuff like a possible deflationary spiral does not make much sense unless bitcoin is at least a major currency. Before a substantial amount of people use bitcoin for their daily shopping and b2b is using bitcoin heavily, there can be no danger for the world economy incurred by bitcoin.

On the way there (to bitcoin becoming a major currency), there will be another interesting effect: bitcoin is actually inflating the world money supply, because bitcoin can and is being used as fiat substitute. When someone buys 1 BTC from a miner for €25, that miner will spend the €25 in the world economy. That fiat isn't gone. However let's say bitcoin is also actively being used as a currency for payments and also as a store of wealth... The buyer might buy something with his newly acquired bitcoin and the seller of the good might just keep the bitcoin or pass it on to his suppliers (clearly not the case today: he would nowadays typically have to trade it for fiat to pay his suppliers and could keep (and/or spend) his profit at most in bitcoin). Thus now we have 1 BTC and €25 both being used as money within the world economy and have effectively increased the money supply.

The ECB paper contains the related story of the Q-Coin in China:

The third aspect to examine is the interaction between the virtual currencies and the real economy.
Second Life and Bitcoin users are spread around the globe and therefore their impact should also be
interpreted globally. However, if a virtual currency scheme was to be focused on one specific
country, it could indeed have an impact on the money supply of this country. This is what happened
in China with the Chinese virtual currency scheme Q-coin, introduced by the company Tencent,
one of the leading telecom operators in the country. QQ is an instant messaging service provided by
this company that also allows virtual payments to be made with Q-coins. This currency can be
purchased by credit card or by using the remaining balance on a prepaid telephone card. The
exchange rate is fixed against the renminbi. Originally, this currency was implemented only for the
purchase of goods and services provided by Tencent. However, users started using it for person to
person (P2P) payments and some merchants also started accepting Q-coins as a means of payment.
In addition, several online games rewarded users with points that could be exchanged against
Q-coins and ultimately also against yuan in the black market. The virtual currency had evolved into
an illegal money scheme. Chinese authorities saw the amount of Q-coins traded reach several billion
yuan in one year, after rising around 20% annually. In June 2009, the Chinese authorities decided to
ban this currency for trading in real goods in order to “limit its possible impact on the real financial
system”.5 They also provided a definition of a virtual currency and stressed that they would only
allowed it to be used for purchasing the virtual goods and services provided by its issuer and not for
real goods and services.

sorry to quote so much from that paper, but here they actually make my point:

The economics literature has not yet addressed the effect of virtual currencies on real money and
monetary policy. One exception to this is a paper written by Peng and Sun (2009). These authors
argue that virtual currency schemes act as a medium of exchange in the real goods trade and,
therefore, that real GDP is affected and should be taken into account when assessing the effects of
virtual currency schemes on the real money supply. According to the authors, the impact of virtual
currencies on the real money supply depends on two aspects:

• a) the substitution effect of the virtual economy on the real economy. Based on a survey, they infer
  that in China the total income of the real economy tends to decrease because of virtual economic
  activities (e.g. people spending a lot of time in virtual games spend less time working in the real
  world), thereby also affecting the volume of the monetary base.
• b) the crowding-out effect of virtual currencies on real cash. As the volume of virtual currencies
  increases, people hold less cash in real life. This causes a decrease in the cash/deposit ratio and,
  consequently, an increase in the money multiplier.

The authors argue that as the real money supply is affected by virtual currency schemes, central
banks should incorporate virtual currencies into monetary statistics in order to monitor their
volume.
The challenge that virtual currency schemes might eventually pose for the conduct of monetary
policy, in the event that these schemes manage to substantially diminish the use of central bank
sponsored currencies (replacing its roles in providing liquidity and a store of value), has also been
highlighted in a recent BIS document.7

So I support the "whole pie theory" (I think blablabla brought it up?): All the money in the world fights for slices of the pie. So yes: if LTC becomes more valuable, it will take pieces of pie, likely mostly from the BTC piece. But since the "cryptocurrency piece of pie" will likely increase tremendously over time, I even think there would be room for another crypto-coin. However, I currently see none of them having enough advantage over bitcoin to gain substantial foothold.

;tldr: BTC sucks up value (pie) from the FIAT currencies until there is none left. The ECB says they should take that into account in their stats. LTC can try to suck on BTC.

[piramida]

I doubt LTC or any other coin for that matter would be able to gain significant followers, aside from few curios types and people with no money who missed the bitcoin bandwagon.

BTC worked 5 years on adoption, business acceptance, and generally proving itself as a real deal that can be trusted - and that is the basis for the current valuation, not the raw idea or some future expectations. Alternatives have that path yet untraveled, and by the time they will be where bitcoin is now, bitcoin will naturally be 5 years ahead.

So no, it is absolutely unrealistic that a clone cryptocurrency would take any measurable portion of BTC market. Right now, they are all in different states of BTC circa 2009 - play money for a handful of geeks. For any alternative to have any significant impact, it would at least need to have some serious benefits over BTC *and* a proven track record. BTC has a track record - 5 years of uninterrupted blockchain operation. Nothing comes close. And the process of claiming market share, if we see some game changing crypto protocol one day, would be gradual - cross-rate of exchange would keep rising until it completely replaces bitcoins. I don't see anything with a slightest potential for that, yet.

The only serious market portion now taken by alt-coin is NMC, and you know what kinda portion that is - 0.1%. LTC or any other wannabecoins won't have even 0.01% in a couple of years.

[sublime5447]

I am going to quote you on this and then throw it in your face in a year or two. Really small thinking in my mind. Ltc will be adopted much faster than BTC was. Bitcoin already proved the concept, litecoin won't have the same hurdle to cross. In 5 years they will both either be dead or widely accepted, along with some other coins too.