Litecoin is described pretty harshly on the bitcoin wiki

[mc_lovin]

There seems something logically fallacious in the notion that Bitcoin will succeed and Litecoin will fail despite the fact that Litecoin does what Bitcoin does. The assumption is that there can be only one given a lack of differences. What precedent is there for placing such concrete faith in this assumption?

Finally, there are technical differences and saying that there isn't over and over doesn't make it less true. Faster confirmation time is rather nice, imo and having an alternative for GPU/CPU miners in the face of ASIC (as a result of a technical difference) may create a real thriving market in the near future. It is not like some other alt-coins I will not mention that have absolutely no market for expenditure.

This.  And a lot of what users said, once the 600TH+ of ASICs hit the Bitcoin universe, GPU-mining will become history.  Anyone with a GPU is going to have to mine somewhere or quit, they will probably go towards Litecoin, I don't see a lot of users giving up hope.  Mining doesn't make a coin particularly worth more, but it does keep it alive. 

It's so harsh to say that "Litecoin is a pyramid scheme because it's like Bitcoin but not Bitcoin.  Well, if anything Bitcoin had the biggest premine, not directly due to someone hiding in a corner mining coins by themself, but because no one had ever heard of "mining" coins like this, at least the masses weren't aware, so the early adopters (although a lof cashed out) were able to generate thousands of coins per day on hardly any hardware, and this continued for a long time.  A large portion of the original block halving period went to a small group of people, and the percentage gets even scarier when you consider that for the next 40-50 years, Bitcoins get harder and harder to find, eventually only 1 BTC per year and so on, yet there are users who generated enough coins to make their entire families wealthy forever if all goes as planned and they saved their coins.  No reason to call it a pyramid scheme, which is like saying it's a scam, which is misleading and IMHO hypocritical.

Sure, that's the name of the game, getting in while you have a chance, it's perfectly fair for all parties but with Litecoin...  We all have a fair shot at this.  Everyone hearing about it at the same time, everyone has a fair chance to stock up or mine it and that sort of thing.  It's different enough that it's unique, it has properties to make it technically even more valuable as a tool than Bitcoin is.  4x faster confirmation times?  Can you say, small in person transactions made easy?  If a user has to choose between 2.5 minutes and 10 minutes every day or multiple times a day if they are given two options, you know they will choose the faster route (and I'm talking like, the future, when drink machines accept cryptocoins at 1 conf and they're standing their waiting or if you sold something on craigslist and you have the person over at your house and he sends the coins from there and has to wait 10 minutes, potentially much longer?  Time is money, and convenience is a massive bonus in this world. 

Another reason to keep it in mind is that it is a different currency but it's still similar to Bitcoin is enough ways to make it trivial to accept both, and other cryptocurrencies.  Any software developed to accept Bitcoin could be adapted for Litecoin in a small fraction of the time it took to develop it in the first place, I assume in most cases it wouldn't take much effort at all.  

Drawbacks: limited development, it seems to have stalled and regular releases are few and.. nonexistant.  I'm sure with a little effort the tricks learned from Bitcoin could be merged into a new client, or maybe Electrum/Armory/Blockchain.info/and so on could create alternative clients if Litecoin picks up enough momentum to warrant that.

I think it's here to stay and the value is destined to increase but I sometimes get the feeling it's going to take awhile.

[toz]

Faster confirmation time is rather nice, imo

I agree. But you can't think of "confirmation time" as "the time before my client reports a transaction as having six confirmations". The confirmation time is how long you have to wait until you can consider a transaction safe because the amount of proof of work piled on top of it is greater than what you expect an attacker can muster. Because Bitcoin has a higher rate at which mining work is done, it has a lower confirmation time.

Also, because someone can easily retask a botnet or CPU cluster to attack Litecoin, you need a much greater safety margin over the reported network hash rate than you do with Bitcoin.

[romerun]

It is true that people who invent litecoin are upset that they did not involve in bitcoin in the early stage.

[jayez]

What are litecoins worth right now?

[debianlinux]

Faster confirmation time is rather nice, imo

I agree. But you can't think of "confirmation time" as "the time before my client reports a transaction as having six confirmations".

Yes, actually, you can. While your technical analysis is technically valid the reality is when moving funds there is typically a preset confirmation hurdle that must be cleared before the transaction is considered completed, that is, when you may have your product or when you may use your funds.

This aspect of confirmation time impacts the technically illiterate/ignorant in a visceral way that creates an undeniable perception of value in comparison. We live in a culture that places high value on immediate gratification. The deluge of whining noob threads about how long it takes for them to get newly acquired Bitcoins is testament to this (not referring to confirmation times here).

[toz]

This aspect of confirmation time impacts the technically illiterate/ignorant in a visceral way that creates an undeniable perception of value in comparison.

I don't agree that misleading people into thinking their transaction is more secure than it actually is can reasonably be considered "rather nice".

[Lethn]

I call bollocks on some of these criticisms actually because they sound very similar to what people criticize Bitcoin for doing and I suspect they have no idea how it works.

Vulnerability to mining monopoly - They clearly don't understand basic economics or how unregulated free markets work and as far as I'm aware Litecoin follows the same rules as Bitcoin for the most part but there is simply a bit more Litecoins that can be mined

Pyramid scheme - Another case of not having much knowledge because they don't take into account these kind of currencies are deflationary so prices will go down rather than up and make everything cheaper for everyone rather than force them to borrow in order to get things and work off their debt for longer


hmm >_<

[debianlinux]

This aspect of confirmation time impacts the technically illiterate/ignorant in a visceral way that creates an undeniable perception of value in comparison.

I don't agree that misleading people into thinking their transaction is more secure than it actually is can reasonably be considered "rather nice".

Fair point. The solution is precisely the same as that for Bitcoin; contribute hashes to the network.
Again the argument sounds suspiciously like, "it won't work for LTC because it works so well for BTC".

[Pokerfan]

The main point is that LTC brings nothing new of value. Very hard to disagree with this, because it's true.

[debianlinux]

The main point is that LTC brings nothing new of value. Very hard to disagree with this, because it's true.

I'm not entirely disagreeing with that point. I'm asking how that portends the demise of LTC. It is assumption based on zero provided precedent that the 2 coins cannot coexist. This conversation refuses to evolve because the same arguments keep being trotted out but I contend that the arguments themselves have flaws in that they beg a question; Can 2 cryptocurrencies with very similar traits coexist successfully. Your arguments presupposes the answer to be "no". Arguments based on presuppositions with no precedent to reinforce them are not worth considering in my opinion.

[InfSys]

The entry is very subjective. Even propagandistic.

I do not use Litecoin but disagree with this negative view.

Most arguments presented could also be used against Bitcoin if it was simply smaller (or at an earlier development stage).

Also i see no problem in two or more cryptocurrencies coexisting.

[Pokerfan]

It is assumption based on zero provided precedent that the 2 coins cannot coexist. This conversation refuses to evolve because the same arguments keep being trotted out but I contend that the arguments themselves have flaws in that they beg a question; Can 2 cryptocurrencies with very similar traits coexist successfully. Your arguments presupposes the answer to be "no". Arguments based on presuppositions with no precedent to reinforce them are not worth considering in my opinion.

The bigger network is just better because it's bigger: more users, more trust, more devs, more projects, more profit to drive businesses.

[dree12]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/SolidCoin

I would say the LiteCoin article is benign in comparison.

[Pokerfan]

The main point is that LTC brings nothing new of value. Very hard to disagree with this, because it's true.

Can 2 cryptocurrencies with very similar traits coexist successfully. Your arguments presupposes the answer to be "no". Arguments based on presuppositions with no precedent to reinforce them are not worth considering in my opinion.

Ok, I think I was wrong. 2 cryptocurrencies with very similar traits can coexist successfully. Litecoins cannot be confiscated, no one can forbit you to use them.

The main question, will litecoin grow? I don't think so. At it's current size it's not useful for anything.

[debianlinux]

The main question, will litecoin grow? I don't think so. At it's current size it's not useful for anything.

Fair enough, I reserve my judgment for the time when ASIC has fully flushed GPU mining out of the BTC network.

The exact same statement about size and utility held true for BTC not so long ago.

[DeathAndTaxes]

The wiki is pure FUD and

This is coming from someone who honestly doesn't believe LTC has much of a future, but that is mainly due to the network effect.  Being almost a clone of Bitcoin (bugs and all) it has little to differentiate it from BTC.  It may be "good" but "good" isn't "good enough" when it comes to marketshare.   If you launched a site today which was almost as good as facebook how successful do you think it would be.  To beat facebook would require not just an equal competitor but one which is vastly (perceived or real) superior to facebook.  The same thing applies to ebay, email, telephones, electrical transmission standards, etc.  Any network where the value of the network increases based on the number of participants faces a "natural" barrier from established competing networks. 

Imagine you released a "new phone" system, one which was 100% incompatible with existing international telephone network.  You couldn't dial "new phone" numbers from existing phones nor dial existing numbers from "new phones".  Now it is possible this network could successfully coexist or even replace the current phone system but being "good" or even "slightly better" isn't sufficient.  Most people would say "the current phone network is good enough" and not switch.   Now if newphone was vastly superior while still having an uphill challenge it at least has the potential to overcome the network effect (and eventually use the same network effect to "defend" against challengers).

While many Litecoin supports will disagree with the power of the network effect the fact remains that wiki page is FUD and does a disservice to both readers and critics of Litecoin.

[taltamir]

There seems to be suprising lack of focus on even litecoin's own website about what seems to me to be its biggest feature.
Litecoin crypt is based on RAM rather then parallelized math which makes it hostile to ASICs and GPUs.
A GPU is still faster (likely due to how obscenely fast GDDR is) but CPU mining is not obsoleted by it.

How is it a feature that an attacker can easily retask a farm of general purpose CPUs or a botnet to launch a 51% attack and then use them for something else at low cost?

You could do that with bitcoins, specifically with ASICs.
If litecoin successfully takes off there would be too many computers in the world running it to do so.
Its more vulnerable in the short term to this attack while being less vulnerable in the long term.

The wiki is pure FUD and

This is coming from someone who honestly doesn't believe LTC has much of a future, but that is mainly due to the network effect...

This post is awesome, very well thought out, and highly convincing. Thank you for sharing it

[Brunic]

The wiki is pure FUD and

This is coming from someone who honestly doesn't believe LTC has much of a future, but that is mainly due to the network effect.  Being almost a clone of Bitcoin (bugs and all) it has little to differentiate it from BTC.  It may be "good" but "good" isn't "good enough" when it comes to marketshare.   If you launched a site today which was almost as good as facebook how successful do you think it would be.  To beat facebook would require not just an equal competitor but one which is vastly (perceived or real) superior to facebook.  The same thing applies to ebay, email, telephones, electrical transmission standards, etc.  Any network where the value of the network increases based on the number of participants faces a "natural" barrier from established competing networks. 

Imagine you released a "new phone" system, one which was 100% incompatible with existing international telephone network.  You couldn't dial "new phone" numbers from existing phones nor dial existing numbers from "new phones".  Now it is possible this network could successfully coexist or even replace the current phone system but being "good" or even "slightly better" isn't sufficient.  Most people would say "the current phone network is good enough" and not switch.   Now if newphone was vastly superior while still having an uphill challenge it at least has the potential to overcome the network effect (and eventually use the same network effect to "defend" against challengers).

While many Litecoin supports will disagree with the power of the network effect the fact remains that wiki page is FUD and does a disservice to both readers and critics of Litecoin.

Remove the mining aspect, and I completely agree with you.

But, with the ASIC pushing out the GPU out of the Bitcoin game, those GPU need to go somewhere else. Miners don't dream of going out and selling all their GPU on eBay, they want to continue hashing with them. Litecoin, by its nature, is a viable solution right now. I don't know how many miners that currency will attract, but it can possibly be enough to create another network.

The network effect work only if you don't force out a part of the network. Taking out the GPU out of Bitcoin is bigger than we think for Litecoin. All the gamers are out, there's no "gaming-mining computer" anymore with Bitcoin. But it is still possible with Litecoin, and getting a few bucks out of your GPU each month IS an interesting deal.

"Buy this new radeon 9990, play WoW 2 and earn up to 30$/month mining Litecoin!"

[weex]

I don't think this thread is meant to rehash everything that was ever said about Litecoin but I understand how bitcointalk flows...

In any case I posted a message on the wiki's discussion page to unlock this page. I noticed the wiki now has a one-time 0.01 btc payment required to enable your account.

[Mjbmonetarymetals]

Video - http://financialsurvivalnetwork.com/2013/03/bitcoin-calls-litecoin-a-pyramid-scheme/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bitcoin-calls-litecoin-a-pyramid-scheme

Litecoin = robin hood