Is Litecoin really really cheap right now? Or is it dying?

[nameface]

My guess is that there's room for at least a few more similar competing currencies to thrive, re: LTC is silver to BTC as gold.

If they function similarly, couldn't there be a ton of value in having LTC as a hedge? If this is true, why is the price stagnating while BTC is rising so steady and fast?

If Litecoin is useless, does that make all other alternative cryptos useless?

I know I ask a lot of questions..

[misterbigg]

My guess is that there's room for at least a few more similar competing currencies to thrive, re: LTC is silver to BTC as gold.

No

If they function similarly, couldn't there be a ton of value in having LTC as a hedge?

No

If this is true, why is the price stagnating while BTC is rising so steady and fast?

Because it's not true

If Litecoin is useless, does that make all other alternative cryptos useless?

Let's rephrase your question: "If Bitcoin provides all the functionality that people need right now, how can another currency provide usefulness?"

Litecoin is crap.

[shamaniotastook]

I know i'm even newer around here than you, so I don't pretend to be able to answer your question. However, your question does bring to mind some thoughts worth sharing. I don't think there will be room for any alt-coins to thrive until bitcoin truly thrives--and only then, insofar as the alt-coin sticks to the original premise and follows the core-dev lead. It's as if BitCoin RIGHT NOW is on the very edge of becoming great or merely linger as a curious experiment that never really failed, but never realized it's full potential.

So something has to change, but a new or better alt is NOT the answer.

I'm not saying I have the answer, but like everyone else on these threads, informed or misinformed, enlightened and philanthropic or greedy, experienced or not, i'm working on one!

with that said, i think this is why all the interest in each new alt, or like this latest ripple craze...everyone knows it's on the edge, realizing SOMETHING certainly has to come...and when someone with 2000+ posts says THIS IS IT, SIGN UP, GET YOUR FREE COINS...everyone jumps...

this bodes VERY well for any emerging solution that would truly liberate this amazing community!

[Simran]

My guess is that there's room for at least a few more similar competing currencies to thrive, re: LTC is silver to BTC as gold.

No

If they function similarly, couldn't there be a ton of value in having LTC as a hedge?

No

If this is true, why is the price stagnating while BTC is rising so steady and fast?

Because it's not true

If Litecoin is useless, does that make all other alternative cryptos useless?

Let's rephrase your question: "If Bitcoin provides all the functionality that people need right now, how can another currency provide usefulness?"

Litecoin is crap.

Litecoin is crap? Okay, well USD provides all the functions that people need right now, so how can Euros provide usefulness?

[tacotime]

I hoard.  Some people are going to tell you it's crap.  Others that it's invaluable.  It's the longest lasting alt. chain to maintain any value.  It's ASIC resistant.

[misterbigg]

USD provides all the functions that people need right now, so how can Euros provide usefulness?

LOL...You're saying that Bitcoin is to US Dollars what LiteCoin is to the Euro? That's a totally incorrect comparison. If you want to be accurate, you can say that Bitcoin is like Tiffani Amber Thiessen and Litecoin is like Dustin Diamond.

[sublime5447]

LTC is great dont listen to Mrbig. Lets put this simply. You can be a retard and buy btc at all time highs or you can buy LTC before everyone jumps on the bandwagon for a great price. Low risk with potentially great reward. The best thing about LTC to me is that it can help to stabilize BTC price and fuck over the dicks who wont come off any coins because the think they are going to get rich. I say promote and use LTC! There are no real barriers for digital currencies the sooner the BTC crowd realizes that the better. It's not fucking gold and LTC works better IMO.   

[carpetbagger]

I have about 100ltc for every 1btc I own so I guess I have some faith in it. All I can say from experience is that gambling on an LTC site was a very smooth, rapid flow experience. Gambling with btc on satoshi dice was extremely aggravating and unpleasant filled with verification delays. I know gambling is stupid, but that's beside the point. If I send off a bet that is going to make or break me, and I pay the transaction fee, it's not a good user experience for me to chew my nails for 30 minutes plus. Paypal is faster than that. And so is litecoin.  

[Monster Tent]

I think of LTC as a giant bitcoin mixer. What is more anonymous than leaving the bitcoin chain altogether and mixing your coins in the litecoin chain then returning to bitcoin ?

Ill put it another way. If everyone with a bank account buys and sells bitcoins its a lot easier to track people and perform network analysis whereas a chain that has few traditional banking exit points is a lot more difficult.

[ThickAsThieves]

My guess is that there's room for at least a few more similar competing currencies to thrive, re: LTC is silver to BTC as gold.

No

If they function similarly, couldn't there be a ton of value in having LTC as a hedge?

No

If this is true, why is the price stagnating while BTC is rising so steady and fast?

Because it's not true

If Litecoin is useless, does that make all other alternative cryptos useless?

Let's rephrase your question: "If Bitcoin provides all the functionality that people need right now, how can another currency provide usefulness?"

Litecoin is crap.

This is narrow-minded BS.

To the OP, you are getting the right idea. Bitcoon can easily work in tandem with litecoin. The stagnation of ltc is more related to it having to compete with every other altcoin and scamcoin for 2nd place. Altcoin miners are more likely to go whre the short term gains are. The irony is that if everyone supported only btc and ltc, ltc woiuld start appreciating much more.

Hang in there.

[sublime5447]

@ Thickasthieves Of course you are right. I am going to start only selling LTC to my BTC customers as soon as i get btc-e funded. I am going to start selling them on ebay too. IMO you are a dumb ass if you dont get some LTC.

[nethead]

IMO you are a dumb ass if you dont get some LTC.

He is right guys, he is selling so you have to buy, or you are a dumbass

While they are cheap!!!! Hurry up!! lol

Best option for everyone is to mine them not to buy, no matter what your hashrate is. And that only for those that believe that their value is going to up.
I have a few, just in case

But, do whatever you want, noone should follow what i say

[sublime5447]

Whoa I dont care if you buy them, shit mine them and sell them to me. I dont care what you do, but a fool can see that LTC will gain in popularity.

[Brunic]

Hi OP,

Here is the LTC/USD chart of the last 6 months:
http://www.ltc-charts.com/period-charts.php?period=6-months&resolution=day&pair=ltc-usd&market=btc-e

Don't forget that Litecoin has 4 times more coin mined than Bitcoin, so 28,800 each day or 864,000 each month. So, there's a difference of 5 184 000 LTC on the market between now and 6 months ago. Price was 0.03999 $USD 6 months ago and now is at 0.06640 $USD.

[markm]

Bitcoin has been rallying so fast lately that people have tended to cash out altcoins for bitcoins to get a ride on the faster growth-of-value curve. When altcoins are going up in value faster than bitcoin the reverse happens. A lot of the changes are "reactive", people reacting to what already happened, maybe even too late, and magnifying the original change that motivated them to make a move.

Litecoins are, as previous post shows, way up over six months or more. If you're looking for all time lows to buy in at, DeVCoin might look better right now as it actually is ridiculously low. But all the altcoins that I actually have enough of to consider selling are so low right now compared to bitcoin I haven't used any to buy bitcoins with lately because buying bitcoin near its all time high using altcoins near their all time low doesn't seem all that brilliant an idea.

(I don't have enough litecoin to bother selling, that, not it being anywhere near an all time low, is why I have not sold litecoins to buy bitcoins.)

-MarkM-

[El Cabron]

LTC is pretty level in the terms of fiat. However ltc seems to counter BTC and I expect LTC to do very well once BTC has its "correction".

Anyway, I'm buying.

[weex]

I talked with a couple people in IRC the other day about what they thought Litecoin's prospects were and at least they seemed not to think Litecoin had much of a chance.

I'll go on the record with my thinking that Litecoin provides "something to do" with your GPU if you want to keep mining with it. Maybe you're looking to mine as much as possible with GPU *and* ASIC. In any case, there is still a huge market of gamers who never mined Bitcoin but will wonder what they can do with their computers once Bitcoin surpasses its all-time high. There litecoin'll be.

Once the miner/user base grows, I expect upward price movement and increased developer focus. I'm not sure it'll come from Bitcoiners though. I'd imagine it'll just be different.

[El Cabron]

I talked with a couple people in IRC the other day about what they thought Litecoin's prospects were and at least they seemed not to think Litecoin had much of a chance.

I'll go on the record with my thinking that Litecoin provides "something to do" with your GPU if you want to keep mining with it. Maybe you're looking to mine as much as possible with GPU *and* ASIC. In any case, there is still a huge market of gamers who never mined Bitcoin but will wonder what they can do with their computers once Bitcoin surpasses its all-time high. There litecoin'll be.

Once the miner/user base grows, I expect upward price movement and increased developer focus. I'm not sure it'll come from Bitcoiners though. I'd imagine it'll just be different.

LTC is faster than BTC and more can be sent. Once we reach the transaction limit for BTC people will be forced to use LTC (or fiat) for things like s.dice.

[weex]

As someone who accepts zero confirmation transactions, I'm not really sold on the faster block rate being the killer app. For a similar level of security, you still need to wait for confirmations and with them coming so fast, you need to wait for more of them. I'm not exactly sure of the math but I think security is proporional to total hashes burying a block. A finney attack on LTC is still way cheaper than on BTC so maybe I'd trust $5 worth to a zero confirmation, $20 to 1 confirmatino. For Bitcoin I'd go $50-100 for zero confirmation and double that for 1 confirmation.

[markm]

There are some people who seem to think bitcoin cannot tolerate any "competition", somehow being such a delicate flower, its own growth so unsure, that it needs a total vacuum around it, nothing similar on the horizon, in order to have any chance at all itself. All of which is just silly.

I do not want to spend bitcoins until they get to where they are going, which should certainly be hundreds of dollars per coin and hopefully more like thousands per coin by the time they reach any kind of reasonable plateau. Thus it makes a lot of sense to me to have other coins so one one has something to spend that doesn't involve selling off any of one's currently insanely-undervalued bitcoins.

Some people have found altcoins particularly useful as things they can borrow, using their bitcoins as collateral, to buy more bitcoins. Though actually lenders often find it better to implement such loans using options contracts than to get the whole "debt" concept involved, so that they don't get stuck with fiat instead of the actual coins they want in return for the collateral.

(e.g. "For 100 BTC, I will sell you an option to buy 100 BTC for X altcoin, plus a lump sum of Y altcoin" type of constructs.)

-MarkM-