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

[smoothie]

misterbigg is a dumbass.

The week(s) he was talking shit about Litecoin were the few that were just before Litecoin's bullrun up to $0.75 from $0.075.

Good job dumbass (misterbigg). How is that bitcoin-elitist-kool-aid tasting now? 

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[BlackBison]

Another BTC 'cultist' who has given horrible advice. Thats corpse number 1345 on the list of roadkill who have been doubting LTC since March 2012 and been dead wrong every day  

These guys are exactly like the brainless gold bugs who just chant the same BS all day just to protect their own little bubble of wealth.

Newsflash: cutting edge technologies have twists and turns that no-one can predict perfectly. First to market doesn't usually mean jack in todays fast paced, low barrier to entry tech industries.

Competition is healthy and in my opinion the crypto-currency sector must have several actors in it for it to be succesful in the real world. If not the idea is simply not as great as we believe and we are all wasting our time here..

EDIT: I own gold, silver, btc and ltc so I am not biased.

[creativex]

EDIT: I own gold, silver, btc and ltc so I am not biased.

Nice portfolio! I concur, and to ensure that my own very similar portfolio remains *MY* portfolio I also invest in lead.

[smoothie]

EDIT: I own gold, silver, btc and ltc so I am not biased.

Nice portfolio! I concur, and to ensure that my own very similar portfolio remains *MY* portfolio I also invest in lead.

While you're at it invest in BFL = Box of Fans Laughing

[Liquid]

ROFL i own Silver LTC and BTC 

[Mjbmonetarymetals]

Off topic alert , anyone bought rhodium ? Baird and co. uk and Cohen mint US, starting to get tempted by the price not that I'm saying it'll get back to $10,000 per oz but its not much more than gold right now 

[SRoulette]

I for one would like to see litecoin resume active development.
It is quite impressive it has survived this long on its own, a testament to its lasting power I think, but with newer features and more optimization being put into bitcoin litecoin is starting to look a little dated.

[smoothie]

I for one would like to see litecoin resume active development.
It is quite impressive it has survived this long on its own, a testament to its lasting power I think, but with newer features and more optimization being put into bitcoin litecoin is starting to look a little dated.

Less is more.

[El Cabron]

I for one would like to see litecoin resume active development.
It is quite impressive it has survived this long on its own, a testament to its lasting power I think, but with newer features and more optimization being put into bitcoin litecoin is starting to look a little dated.

Less is more.

I like ltc cuz they dont "fix" it and get bugs...

[smoothie]

I for one would like to see litecoin resume active development.
It is quite impressive it has survived this long on its own, a testament to its lasting power I think, but with newer features and more optimization being put into bitcoin litecoin is starting to look a little dated.

Less is more.

I like ltc cuz they dont "fix" it and get bugs...

+1

[SRoulette]

I for one would like to see litecoin resume active development.
It is quite impressive it has survived this long on its own, a testament to its lasting power I think, but with newer features and more optimization being put into bitcoin litecoin is starting to look a little dated.

Less is more.

I like ltc cuz they dont "fix" it and get bugs...

Except that litecoin will need active development if it hopes to scale, see bitcoin+satoshidice+blocksize limit fiasco.
It could also use the updated db that is in the 0.8 client for speeding up the blockchain download and pruning the db.

Otoh litecoin is a rather simple modification of bitcoin (and not the first of its type) so while I complain about the absence of updates should drastic any need arise I imagine it would be fairly straight forward to sync litecoin to the 0.8x branch.

[smoothie]

I for one would like to see litecoin resume active development.
It is quite impressive it has survived this long on its own, a testament to its lasting power I think, but with newer features and more optimization being put into bitcoin litecoin is starting to look a little dated.

Less is more.

I like ltc cuz they dont "fix" it and get bugs...

Except that litecoin will need active development if it hopes to scale, see bitcoin+satoshidice+blocksize limit fiasco.
It could also use the updated db that is in the 0.8 client for speeding up the blockchain download and pruning the db.

Otoh litecoin is a rather simple modification of bitcoin (and not the first of its type) so while I complain about the absence of updates should drastic any need arise I imagine it would be fairly straight forward to sync litecoin to the 0.8x branch.

stay 1 release behind bitcoin. I dont see a flaw in that.

[markm]

What almost all the altcoins need, a common need, is for the bitcoin codebase to be quick and easy to morph from one coin type to another.

Big git pulls though are less likely to get pulled than small simple ones that clearly do not break anything.

I even floated the idea of creating two new header files, specs.h and cosmetics.h or something along those lines; the specs would contain all the constants that differentiate one coin from another, such as maximum number of coins eve, number of satoshis to a coin, minimum transaction and relaying fees and so on and so on, even the IRC server(s) for the IRC rendezvous system and the range of channels to use. The default port numbers. The four bytes of "magic numbers" used in the connection handshake. Basically everything of that kind that all chains have.

cosmetics would include things like the all-lowercase name of the coin, the all-uppercase three-letter currency code, the various images such as icon, favicon, whatever that identify the coin, everything that is purely cosmetic characterisation / identification of which coin it is.

Trying to move all those things all at once would very likely be the kind of large refactoring of code that is unlikely to get pulled. But simple clear steps apparently might actually get pulled.

So maybe first introduce the proposed new header files, empty but commented as to their intended us, along with #includes of them absolutely everywhere they are going to be needed. (Which might be as simple as including them in some one header that already is included everywhere.)

If that gets pulled, then on to putting maybe the all-lowercase name of the coin in there, and patch all files that use the all-lowercase name in a way that causes it be become visible to a user. Then if that gets pulled, the mixed case name, and so on. (Actually maybe starting with the mixed case, e.g Bitcoin, Litecoin, Devcoin, etc might seem less weird than proposing to "fix" the all-lowercase first.

It could be a long haul, in order to avoid presenting any one pull that is "too large or too complicated", but maybe over time we can get the mainline code to be easier and easier to adapt.

-MarkM-

[tacotime]

Crossposting here to show that yes, Litecoin is still cheap

Could you update this too with the cost of power per USD earned at current difficulty?

The calculation is like this:
For LTC it takes 131.7 KH/s right now (diff = 84.2242236212) to mine 1 USD equiv in 24 hours.
A 7950 pulling 190 w/h will get about 575 KH/s.

190 w/h * (131.7 KH/s / 575 KH/s) = 43.52 w/h * 24 h = 1044.44 w = 1.04444 kw at 10 cents a watt = 10.44 cents.

However, for BTC we should use the wattage of most efficient miner, Avalon, which is 60 GH/s at 500 W (~400 w DC)
At diff 4,847,647, we need 0.2059 GH/s to mine 1 USD equiv. in 24 h.

500 w/h * (0.2059 GH/s / 60.0 GH/s) = 1.716 w/h * 24 h = 41.18 w = 0.04118 kw at 10 cents a watt = 0.4118 cents.
You could also do the calculation for GPUs.

Such a calculation would be immensely helpful to people trying to figure out what the valuation should be of scrypt versus SHA256 alternative currencies.

[mr_random]

Crossposting here to show that yes, Litecoin is still cheap

Could you update this too with the cost of power per USD earned at current difficulty?

The calculation is like this:
For LTC it takes 131.7 KH/s right now (diff = 84.2242236212) to mine 1 USD equiv in 24 hours.
A 7950 pulling 190 w/h will get about 575 KH/s.

190 w/h * (131.7 KH/s / 575 KH/s) = 43.52 w/h * 24 h = 1044.44 w = 1.04444 kw at 10 cents a watt = 10.44 cents.

However, for BTC we should use the wattage of most efficient miner, Avalon, which is 60 GH/s at 500 W (~400 w DC)
At diff 4,847,647, we need 0.2059 GH/s to mine 1 USD equiv. in 24 h.

500 w/h * (0.2059 GH/s / 60.0 GH/s) = 1.716 w/h * 24 h = 41.18 w = 0.04118 kw at 10 cents a watt = 0.4118 cents.
You could also do the calculation for GPUs.

Such a calculation would be immensely helpful to people trying to figure out what the valuation should be of scrypt versus SHA256 alternative currencies.

So if I am understanding your calculations correctly, mining Litecoin is twenty times more profitable on average?

[tacotime]

So if I am understanding your calculations correctly, mining Litecoin is twenty times more profitable on average?

No, I gave the cost in power to mine 1 USD in LTC and BTC.

So, Litecoin is twenty times less profitable than mining BTC right now with the inefficient Avalon ASICs.  Once BFL ASICs come out, or some other better competitor, we could see the cost to mine 1 USD in BTC decrease another 5-10 fold in the next few months.

Given this, we might guess that
1) BTC price will drop 20-100 fold or difficulty will increase 20-100 fold
or
2) LTC price will increase 20-100 fold (or LTC difficulty will drop 20-100 fold; unlikely)
 upon the mass introduction of SHA256 ASICs so long as no LTC scrypt ASICs or super efficient FPGAs come out (I doubt they will, personally).

[mr_random]

Given this, we might guess that either BTC price will drop 20-100 fold or LTC price will increase 20-100 fold upon the mass introduction of ASICs so long as no LTC ASICs or super efficient FPGAs come out (I doubt they will, personally).

When can we expect the mass introduction of ASICs?

A super efficient FPGA for LTC's Scrypt algorithm would constitute an academic computer science breakthrough worthy of publication in a journal.

20-100 fold increases or decreases sounds too big to me but it will be fascinating to see how the mining ecosystem responds.

[tacotime]

Sorry, made some edits for clarity.

Mass introduction of ASICs will be within 1-3 months, 3 months maximum.  There is simply too much money to be made there right now, people are becoming keen to the fact that bitcoin mining consumers will throw millions of dollars at them if they can provide ASICs for them.

My guess is that we'll see all three likely scenarios play out concurrently;
1) Drop in BTC price.
2) Hike in BTC difficulty.
3) Hike in LTC price.

[efx]

I for one would like to see litecoin resume active development.
It is quite impressive it has survived this long on its own, a testament to its lasting power I think, but with newer features and more optimization being put into bitcoin litecoin is starting to look a little dated.

Less is more.

I like ltc cuz they dont "fix" it and get bugs...

Except that litecoin will need active development if it hopes to scale, see bitcoin+satoshidice+blocksize limit fiasco.
It could also use the updated db that is in the 0.8 client for speeding up the blockchain download and pruning the db.

Otoh litecoin is a rather simple modification of bitcoin (and not the first of its type) so while I complain about the absence of updates should drastic any need arise I imagine it would be fairly straight forward to sync litecoin to the 0.8x branch.

Umm...Didn't Coblee already reply to you directly in another thread not too long ago? Development does not happen over night, and it's a damn good thing LTC hung back.  "It could also use the updated db that is in the 0.8 client for speeding up the blockchain download and pruning the db."
There's no urgent need. It will come.

Also, correct if I'm wrong...LTC can already handle significantly more transactions in a given period of time than bitcoin can, even with the .8 update.

[Scratch]

Sorry, made some edits for clarity.

Mass introduction of ASICs will be within 1-3 months, 3 months maximum.  There is simply too much money to be made there right now, people are becoming keen to the fact that bitcoin mining consumers will throw millions of dollars at them if they can provide ASICs for them.

My guess is that we'll see all three likely scenarios play out concurrently;
1) Drop in BTC price.
2) Hike in BTC difficulty.
3) Hike in LTC price.

This makes a lot of sense. Hike in LTC difficulty too(to a lesser extent but still probably significant enough) I would have thought?