Which Internet Currency will Prevail in the Years to Come?

[Paleus]

Hello Everyone,

It seems will the emergence of a group of alternative internet currencies, BitCoin has some competition.  Based on the research I've done thus far, it is a 3 horse race comprising of:

-  BitCoin
-  Litecoin
-  Ripple

I'm wondering if one of these currencies will rise to power while the other two will fade into disparity.  Which currency do you see prevailing and which ones will falter?

Do you believe a good investment strategy is investing in all 3?  Or do you prefer to stick just with Bitcoins?

I am curious as to what the advantages of each currency are.  I know Litecoin has a faster mining rate and a greater number of units that will eventually be in exchange, but I 'm unsure as to how that will allow it to overtake Bitcoin.
 What does Ripple have going for it that the others do not?

What is your take on it?

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[wizzardTim]

Personally I go with the LiteCoin. It is faster than BitCoin, at least from what I've experienced. I believe it has already started to shine and it will have a bright future. Many merchants have already adopted it and their number will grow in the near future.

The BitCoin train has already passed for me..

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

bitcoin obviously

[ElectricMucus]

XRP (Ripple) will prevail as a speculative deflationary asset over BTC and LTC if the project is at all successful.
In that case both BTC and LTC can remain useful and valuable but their market share will be tiny in comparison to XRP.

[markm]

The more alts succeed the more Ripple will succeed, as a convenient way to exchange among them all...

-MarkM-

[allthingsluxury]

I believe it is going to be a combination of alt currencies. Not one is going to dominate. This is a good thing in my opinion.

[mr_random]

I really doubt there will be only one mainstream cryptocurrency. Even if Bitcoin was flawless, which it's not, in almost every economic market you have competition. To people who think there's no need for something like Litecoin, what's the point in silver when we already have gold?

I honestly think out of all the alt currencies PPCoin has the most potential. Bitcoins transaction fees are only going to increase over time as more people use it... it's a problem which is ticking time bomb. PPCoin won't suffer that fate. People are pumping up and pumping up Bitcoin and when it finally becomes mainstream they are all going to look at each other and go 'damn, this new coin has transaction fees the same size as paypal'. They will look for an alternative and see PPCoin which by then should already be prospering somewhat. In fact, this should happen even before Bitcoins become truly massive, people will start looking towards the future and see what I am seeing. PPCoin has other unique benefits too but I'll leave that to another post.

That's looking longterm.

For the medium term I see Litecoin doing very well. It's gained just enough traction at the right time to be dragged up by the coat tails of Bitcoin's success.

[ElectricMucus]

People are pumping up and pumping up Bitcoin and when it finally becomes mainstream they are all going to look at each other and go 'damn, this new coin has transaction fees the same size as paypal'.

Litecoin already has pretty steep fees considering its current valuation. But honestly I like high fees. (Not paying them)
But I am willing to pay them if it keeps the network stable as intended. Rising fees would have a dampening effect on volatility and would act of quasi demurrage scheme if the transaction space is scarce enough.

[wiggi]

Ripple is the Joker in the game. Potentially much more useful than *coins
but right now ripple is vulnerable in terms of regulatory risk and,
really, we don't know much about it, how does it scale, how does it
in practice deal with sybil attacks, ddos attempts, modded clients etc.

[cbeast]

Litecoin requires too much energy per MH/s. Fewer miners will support the network. That makes it less secure.
Ripple may be decentralized in theory, but it is information based. That makes it centralized.
Bitcoin isn't perfect, but it's still in beta. Much has been developed to improve its performance. Bitcoin is more than adequate to replace the global monetary system.

[tgsrge]

most likely? one yet to be invented that applies well the lessons learned from bitcoin and others (or maybe just makes a different set of design trade-offs/decisions)

but we might also have a situation similar to the bullion market where gold, silver and platinum group metals (mainly platinum and palladium) all have their own characteristics and complement each other nicely. We could end up with a bunch of different successful cryptocurrencies. IMO that situation where we have multiple (not just 1 or 2) viable cryptocurrencies that complement each other would be the best possible outcome.

Bitcoin isn't perfect, but it's still in beta. Much has been developed to improve its performance. Bitcoin is more than adequate to replace the global monetary system.

Hell no. bitcoin is nowhere near being even remotely close to adequate enough to replace the global monetary system (and yes i know that could hardly be more broken). NONE of the cryptocurrencies are. And this comes from someone who was around before the times of the gox hack, the bitcoinica "hack", etc. i'm not anti-bitcoin. i was not really an early adopter of bitcoin but i've been active with bitcoin for a longer time. People seem to think of bitcoin as this already established thing....it's not. bitcoin is still heavily experimental, and i would never invest anything i could not afford to lose in any of the *coins, let alone the entire global monetary system ("noes, the blockchain has just forked *mass global panic/violence/turmoil/riots/disorder/meltdown ensues, the few remnant scant survivors of humanity get to tell the story*") <---this is pretty much how i imagine it would go down.

[bitcool]

Litecoin requires too much energy per MH/s. Fewer miners will support the network. That makes it less secure.

really? how much more?

My gpus are maxed out no matter I mine btc or ltc anyway, makes no difference to me.

[cbeast]

Litecoin requires too much energy per MH/s. Fewer miners will support the network. That makes it less secure.

really? how much more?

My gpus are maxed out no matter I mine btc or ltc anyway, makes no difference to me.

Have you heard about ASICs? They take about 1-2% of the power per MH/s of a GPU for mining Bitcoin.

[Notanon]

My four picks:

• Bitcoin
• Litecoin
• PPCoin
• Terracoin

Bitcoin, because it's stood the test of time and has too much money involved to easily die off. Litecoin, because it has a faster transaction time than Bitcoin and has a different encryption method, therefore suited to more day-to-day small transactions that occur more frequently than Bitcoin, and mining is more accessible to the average punter. PPcoin will pick up from those who are conscious about their energy use, and might be seen as a greener alternative to the first two in terms of reducing mining impact on greenhouse gas emissions, along with the proof-of-stake confirmation in conjunction with the established proof-of-work confirmation method. And Terracoin due to the faster difficulty adjustment for mining, and fast transaction time similar to Litecoin.

[CoinHoarder]

My two picks: BTC/LTC

Everything else is borderline pump & dump or dead/dying.

[MagicBit15]

My four picks:

• Bitcoin
• Litecoin
• PPCoin
• Terracoin

I also like namecoin and devcoin. I do not know much about novacoin, but I think BTC and LTC are the ways to go. Also I need to learn more about ripple, I still do not quite understand it.

[smoothie]

The more alts succeed the more Ripple will succeed, as a convenient and risky way to exchange among them all...

-MarkM-

Ripple is based on central trust. It will fail eventually. Centralized supply creation...so fail.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

The more alts succeed the more Ripple will succeed, as a convenient and risky way to exchange among them all...

-MarkM-

Ripple is based on central trust. It will fail eventually. Centralized supply creation...so fail.

Ripple isn't even open source.

[ryepdx]

I don't think there will just be one, since each currency addresses slightly different needs.

Bitcoin has far more name recognition and a lot more money behind it. That counts for a lot, and I don't think we'll see it go away anytime soon.

I like PPCoin a lot for its PoS system, though I admit I only found out about it today and haven't gotten a chance to delve into the technical details yet. But if it works the way it's supposed to, then it's a very novel, efficient approach that could result in a much more robust, scalable network than any of the other currencies enjoy. However, it looks like the developer hasn't done a very good job of getting other people on board, which puts it at risk. I also hate the name. It's hard enough asking people if they accept bitcoin. No way in hell am I ever saying, "Do you accept pee-pee coin?"

Seriously, I think I'd readily switch to a PPCoin knock-off if it meant I didn't have to use something called PPCoin. Call it PeerCoin, maybe, but PPCoin? Good god.

Anyway...

LiteCoin seems to be a crowd favorite, what with the faster deployment and faster transactions. I'm not particularly excited by it, but I keep seeing it called "the silver to Bitcoin's gold." That's pretty strong psychological ground to take. It'll probably be around for a while.

NameCoin will probably be around for a while too. It can be merge-mined, and it's the only decentralized DNS system I've seen. I'm pretty happy about that, and I really want to see it do well because of it. Of course, I do tend to think of it more as a DNS system than as a currency. I don't know if we'll ever see it used primarily as a currency, which is fine. That's not the problem it's trying to solve anyway.

[EDIT]
Derp. Reading more about NovaCoin. Am no longer 100% certain it's a scam. PPCoin without the PP...?

[cdog]

There is BTC, LTC, and then everything else far behind. Ripple is like worse than fiat currency.