Speculation Rule: buy when others are irrationally pessimistic or too cautious

[iamnotback]

Managed to sneak some at <60 as expected. Segwit is now at 48%

http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php

Assuming the chink it's trolling us with an april-fools only signaling, I don't see why we can't try again for the 0.008 resistance, even 0.01, if we break this convincingly I think we can start talking about an epic pump. Let's see how US wakes up to LTC's segwit at almost 50%

SegWit miner support is at 57% now and climbing. Increasing at roughly 1% per hour!

You played a very tight game. Well done. I've increased my LTC position by 50% just now. I've taken on more risk now than is probably justified for my current situation, but if I could turn $10,000 into $50,000, then I could hire another programmer to help me so I am going for it.

You've expressed to me in other threads that you are depending on growing your BTC in order to address health issues, so I understood how cautious you needed to be. I can't put the effort that you do into day trading. I am focused on big picture things and my time opportunity cost is I think $millions if not $billions, given that I think I have the design that will be superior to Bitcoin. Those who have been reading my posts about Nash's ideal money concept understand more about my reasoning.

Now everyone will have learned to pay attention to what I write. Always of course to check my logic and make your own trading decisions. It's your money so you must be responsible for it.

This thread began with me advocating to buy BTC at $600s. And now I probably made the correct call on the big move up in Litecoin.

I've also documented upthread that I made the correct call on when to load up on XMR before its huge rise.

And I documented upthread the (incorrect) reasoning for my one mistake when I thought perhaps Bitcoin might bottom below $100 after reaching my initial bottom target of $150. I did correctly call the fall from $600s to $150.

Well i did say when it was at ~25% that it will end up with 60%. Because it had the support of 60% of the hashrate since yesterday when f2pool joined. Problem is, it needs 15% more.

It is increasing at faster than 1% per hour. You think that will just stop on a dime at 60%.

Y'all may not have much time remaining to make this trade. We'll see...

The way these things usually resolve is rapid capitulation once the last major holdout sees the inevitability of it all.

[york780]

Ethereum Classic is going moon because of Grewscale investmentsgroup backing it. There is now a ETC fund. Etc will moon, not Litecoin. 

[iamnotback]

Ethereum Classic is going moon because of Grewscale investmentsgroup backing it. There is now a ETC fund. Etc will moon, not Litecoin.  

Afaics, they are nothing in size and influence compared to the number in parties who benefit from SegWit on Litecoin. I read a post recently that explained that ETC has basically collapsed in terms of development compared to ETH.

I've explained my hypothesis in great detail.

So now all I can say is, place your bets gentlemen.

[steelboy]

So, if I am correct you are suggesting that LTC is going up because it is about to start with Segwit. Is that correct?

[iamnotback]

Low power Scrypt ASIC is out of stock!

April fools is already over in China, the joke would be going too far if he switched off now, it would make a lot of people invested in LTC lose a lot of money. Apparently people has invested in scrypt mining gear too. If he pulls out now he's asking to get shot. Those kind of jokes have real life consequences.

The economics are not a joke. This is virtually a sure thing. Anyone not buying LTC right now is going to be butthurt and have less BTC than those who did. However, SegWit signaling has stalled at 58% for the past hour or two.

The economics are such that which ever miners have a vested interest in keeping the LTC price down thus not signaling SegWit will gradually be debased within the hashrate because those who are buying up the old model A4 Scrypt miners are only profitable at this higher price. So they will signal SegWit as the supply of A4s becomes sold out.The new models which are twice as efficient are monopolized by those who want the price to go higher. This economics seems inevitable.

[iamnotback]

QUESTION: will a higher LTC price suck GPU hashrate from ETH or is there sufficient supply of GPUs? If yes, then even Ethereum's miners might be in support of the Litecoin activation of SegWit. Why would BTCC mine LTC with their GPUs otherwise.

BTCC wins because they have warehouses of gpu's

Okay so Litecoin has 58% of SegWit signaling without BTCC's help. Yet Bobby Lee created BTCC because of his brother Charlie Lee. I think we can expect BTCC take some GPU hashrate away from ETH and/or ETC, to push SegWit to activation at 75% support and keep it there while the support for SegWit solidifies for the inevitable economic reason I have explained. They will be losing money on the LTC mining with GPUs, but gaining overall in the strategic sense. Remember BTCC is also involved with Scrypt mining so their profitability on that will increase as a result of a much higher LTC price. The GPUs are probably their least valuable asset that is closest to end of life, so they'd probably sacrifice it, especially given Vitalik is planning on changing the consensus algorithm to PoS.

Thus I now feel this is virtually a sure thing and have dumped my ETH in exchange for LTC. I don't want to be holding ETH if BTCC removes hashrate from ETH and/or ETC.

@alyssa85, it's a mix of hype (btc can't activate it, ltc can) plus the fact that segwit enables LN, plus new asic miners which are extremely efficient so the miners will benefit alot from these miners and higher prices. Plus the fact that most ltc is in chinese hands therefore they control most of the supply which means they can pump it alot, and the fact that they mine it is a double win. I think this is why @iamnotback thinks ltc may reach ATH, assuming segwit's activating.

Other projects with segwit don't matter because they are too small, no network effect, no brand recognition, etc. Did i miss anything ?

Speculation is future looking. If Litecoin gets LN and Bitcoin doesn't, then LN is the top contender for (private fractional reserve banking) scaling that will be acceptable to those who support only Satoshi's PoW.

Ethereum is next best contender for LN clone Raiden, but Ethereum is for a different crowd of speculators who believe in more uses for blockchain than just payments. Not for the conservative Bitcoin maximalists. I'll be trading some back into ETH (taking profits to recover original investment and let the rest ride) after the big move up in LTC, if I am correct about that. (Otherwise I'll be licking my wounds)

After that is bunch of dogshit coins that nobody (who knows technology of blockchains well) gives a hoot about except to pump and dump, except maybe Monero and Zcash but I'm waiting for a re-entry point in Monero below $15.

[iamnotback]

A chart communicates more effectively than 1000 words...

See any familiarity with the above chart and the typical one for new investments:

I expected a correction because the price went too high too quickly. Most of the time when we see it spike high like that, it will come back a little.

They will play you as well, because you'll be the one who sells too early when the price rocket goes into a phase transition run to ATHs. They will eventually do that after they done shaking weak hands out. Your stance can be characterized as another form of weak hand because of selling too soon into a bull run.

The first bubble to $1200 in 2013 was the first hump of the typical new technology invesment. The second major hump is the big enchilada and you should never sell except possibly to trade to altcoins to increase your BTC, if you are so inclined and are astute at such speculation.

I was correct about Bitcoin:



That chart is clearly indicating that Bitcoin can't move higher until Litecoin catches up.

Litecoin's price is undergoing the same technology adoption as Bitcoin and all the rest, it is just that the first hump is very volatile (because silver is more volatile than gold for the reasons I have explained). So this means Litecoin's price is going to $100+:

[miscreanity]

I was correct about Bitcoin:



That chart is clearly indicating that Bitcoin can't move higher until Litecoin catches up.

Litecoin's price is undergoing the same technology adoption as Bitcoin and all the rest, it is just that the first hump is very volatile (because silver is more volatile than gold for the reasons I have explained). So this means Litecoin's price is going to $100+:

Bitcoin is slowly grinding upward through resistance levels:



Interestingly, Ethereum is declining in Bitcoin while remaining stable in USD:





Now look at Litecoin:





Bitcoin charts are showing volume levels after major price spikes as remaining elevated. Since the January 2015 low produced a high in volume, and the December 2015 high produced another high in volume, the trend has been down. However, that trend has breaking to the upside for the past couple of weeks. Meanwhile, Litecoin's volume downtrend since the 2013 high was broken in October 2016 and has been tentatively reversed thanks to the most recent spike.

We have capital flowing from USD into BTC, ETH, LTC, etc. We're also seeing ETH->BTC but it's then difficult to determine where funds are flowing. It could be moving from BTC to any number of other coins.

While I don't think it is a requirement that LTC rise to match BTC, your explanation is plausible and would result in capital movements similar to what we're seeing - large hodlers shifting positions.

I doubt we'll have to wait more than a few weeks to start seeing some movements, but it may be a few months before the primary upward trend resumes with strength - potentially as an inflection point of the expected phase transition.

[iamnotback]

@miscreanity what I see on those charts is that Bitcoin is making lower highs and lower lows after the $1280 (isn't that a double-top from the peak intraday price in 2013?), which is short-term bearish. And the candlesticks on Litecoin are forming a wedge pattern which about to breakout, either to the upside or downside (but normally such a pattern will continue in the direction it was on, so upside breakout).

Combine that chart understanding with the fundamental understanding of Bitcoin as Nash's ideal money, and that is why I posit that Bitcoin can't move higher until Litecoin catches up.

Perhaps my hypothesis is totally wrong, but I've shared it all in open source for others to respond to.

I doubt we'll have to wait more than a few weeks to start seeing some movements, but it may be a few months before the primary upward trend resumes with strength - potentially as an inflection point of the expected phase transition.

You mean the BTC upward trend?

I am hypothesizing that BTC will be range-bound (eyeballing it perhaps $800 - $1150ish), until Litecoin has clearly signaled that it is resuming its relevancy and on the way towards an ATH.



As for ETH, it was more compelling when it looked like there was no other Lightning Networks alternative to Bitcoin, given that Ethereum's LN clone named Raiden is nearing beta. I think those who diversified from BTC into ETH, take profits when ever it rises relative to BTC.

[Dimelord]

good post, i liked it.
i totally agree with the main idea of it an actually i was talking about it with someone the other day, that you should always buy when everything is calm and everybody is desperate. that is the time when price is at the lowest (with the exception of weird unexpected stuff like bitfinex hack and the drop).
and if you buy then you can make the biggest profit.

Agreed.I too follow the rule given by Warren Buffet,"Buy when every one is selling and sell when every one is buying".I have followed this and gained more profits.

[iamnotback]

When I see those charts I always have to reflect on how this has all played out and I'm astounded.

So yes, the LTC chart seems to show that LTC is just playing out how we should expect really.

I had a similar reaction when I viewed today the LTC chart in perspective of this theory of first hump and then second larger hump that seems to occur in technology adoption.

Although as you were saying, and I had thought myself many times, LTC didn't really seem to have any unique and valuable characteristics and I kinda assumed it was dead.

Yeah I just couldn't think of any compelling feature that could ignite LTC, but I had myopically forgotten that perhaps Litecoin could activate SegWit (and thus Lightning Networks scaling). And it hadn't completely become clear to me until 2-3 days ago, that Bitcoin was never going to fork or softfork significant changes to its protocol. I explained why. Once I realized Bitcoin is never going to allow any major changes to its protocol, then I started to think about what would Blockstream do. That is when I was ripe for realizing what the LTC spike in price is probably about. Of course most of the Bitcoiners are stuck on this concept that Bitcoin has to scale, which I have realized is entirely unnecessary (and you still need to understand this) because Litecoin can scale yet Bitcoin will still capture the lion's share of the value of the scaling of Litecoin.

After you had mentioned hedging by buying other alt-coins, I got thinking that in terms of a true hedge, LTC seemed to be the most non-volatile coin for the past 2 years. I was going to make a purchase of LTC simply as a safe haven to wait out the BTC mess and I literally woke up the next morning and it had jumped from $4ish to $6ish. Once I reviewed your ideas more, it seemed to be sign and it made perfect sense that LTC would adopt SegWit and get it's second chance.

Many of us were looking at LTC and almost ready to pull the trigger. I was wanting to trade 33% of my ETH because ETH had risen from $45 to $52, so I wanted to lock-in that gain. I just was too slow in assimilating my thought process (because of being overworked and still somewhat chronically ill), so I too woke up to find the price had jumped before I had finished my analysis. But then I was able to quickly assimilate all the facts and realize what was really going is not likely just another pump & dump.

Now thinking of LTC as the the Silver to BTC's Gold, again it feels like it should play out that way. I don't know how to explain it other than a feeling for me. Are you saying that you believe BTC can't rise until LTC catches up because you see it as a Gold/Silver ratio and it's too far out of line right now? Or are what specifically are you seeing in the chart?

I mean fundamentally it makes total sense to me that BTC will not go higher until the scaling issue is resolved. LTC activating SegWit doesn't solve it for BTC, but it does clear the air of the negativity surrounding the BU/Core squabble.

Not a feeling. I have explained that Bitcoin can never get scaling. The only way currently known to get scaling (note I haven't published yet ), is private fractional reserve banking via centralized hubs with Lightning Networks. And to realize this will end up giving Bitcoin much more value than it will give to Litecoin (after Litecoin has caught up and is no longer extremely undervalued). And the only realistic way we get LN on a coin that has a suitable pedigree is Litecoin. There is no other option. Not only pedigree, but also because only Litecoin is sufficiently undervalued in order to totally shock the mining network of Litecoin such that old A4 will be mining profitably on the huge price jump so all the old A4 stock will get sold and will of course signal SegWit.

So it is just the free markets flowing downhill in the path of least resistance. No need for a feeling. It is an objective economics analysis.

No need for voodoo black magic or magical guesses of seeing a witch's eye in a cloud formation.  

[iamnotback]

Mailed some of these pools and asked about segwit, but it will probably take a while.

Can you be more specific?

Pools don't have much say in this. Miners do.

Miners can change to a pool which signals SegWit because miners will earn more with a higher Litecoin price, because the supply of Litecoin mining hardware is limited. The newer ASICs are already out-of-stock. It is only the older A4 ASICs which are not sold out yet (but will be soon enough if the price continues to rise). The miners who already have mining equipment will be making a fortune. So they will signal SeqWit or end up with an unprofitable ASIC that they can't use.

Well if you're honest about your 40-50$+ ltc and not just hype, then i really doubt that.

Fundamental economics trumps marketing.

Actually I am serious about $100+ within a year (probably sooner).

Unless SegWit activation fails, but I highly doubt it. There isn't any other choice. These small scale miners can't mine Ethereum in the future.

Miners aren't going to cut their own throat. Vitalik is switching to PoS. These miners need something they can mine at a good profit. Miners can buy an old A4 and mine LTC profitably now given the recent price rise. Why would they buy more GPUs to mine Ethereum. And they can't mine BTC profitably any more.

I guess they can also choose Zcash or Zcash Classic if they go the GPU route. I deduce by its omission (and my study of Cryptonite) that GPU is not as advantageous on Monero? But GPU supply isn't probably as constrained as ASIC supply, thus miners will earn much more profit by buying an A4 and signaling SegWit on Litecoin (because difficulty will thus also be constrained and not keep up with the rising price on Litecoin). It is just economics. It seems inevitable and unstoppable.

Yeah it might take a while, but the more the Litecoin price goes up, the more miners are going to be jumping to purchase the remaining A4s and signal SegWit. Yet I suspect that some majors such as BTCC are just waiting for the independent mining to signal some level say 70% before they decide to throw their hashrate towards it to push it over the 75% hump. Inherently they are waiting for the Bitcoiners to give up on any changes to Bitcoin and start to argue for SegWit on Litecoin more aggressively. It is a process of Bitcoiners learning about reality and economics. Also for the other miners to learn this economics which I am explaining. Perhaps some of them don't even realize that Bitcoin will maximize its value by enabling SegWit on Litecoin.

Don't forget what btc has but nobody else has: the brand, the first one, the recognition, and thanks to that, it is accepted in places. LTC isn't accepted anywhere and neither does it have any technological features to back it up, therefore people may follow fomo to about 1billion perhaps, but then i don't see why would whales pump it at a loss, don't forget there are some really hungry bagholders in ltc.

Fundamental economics trumps marketing.

When Blockstream decides they have to switch to Litecoin, then everything will flow quite quickly. An activation of SegWit on Litecoin and a continued stalemate on Bitcoin with Ethereum releasing LN clone (Raiden) will light a fire under Blockstream's collective butts. I read some Core devs had already signaled working with Litecoin. Litecoin has been running stably for 6 years. Bugcoin Unlimited seems to have a bug every other week lately.

The Chinese are the boss now. This is the new reality in the world.

Who is losing by raising the LTC price? Any whales who buy in now and ride the revaluation upwards of Litecoin to its correct market value, will be increasing their BTC when they trade back at $50, because Bitcoin will probably only double during the same time period. Of course LTC will be more volatile.

There is enough liquidity in LTC and that is the main factor. When LTC had its first spike, it was because LTC was the only coin (with sufficient liquidity) for the BTC whales to lockin their profits when Bitcoin exceeded $1000 for the first time, without exiting to fiat.

There are only 4 projects in top 15 that aim to become currencies, excepting bitcoin and tether. All of them are in the same position as LTC, they are alts but they have either some nice feature like anonymity or they incentivise bagholding via masternodes. I really don't believe LTC can start the kind of fomo even dash can have. If they do that, they will lose alot of money.

Fundamental economics trumps marketing.

Bitcoiners decide. If Bitcoin can't scale, they have to choose something. And they sure aren't going to endorse Dash nor Ethereum. Since they can't have scaling directly on Bitcoin, they will have to choose the next best option which is Litecoin (and probably change the currency unit to "ecoin" which is the latter part of the Litecoin name). And "ecoin" is a better token name for the masses than "bitcoin".

Bitcoiners have to come to the realization that Ethereum is going to release Raiden soon and Bitcoin is never going to get LN nor bigger blocks. No protocol changes will be possible in Bitcoin. So Bitcoiners are going to have to move into Litecoin to raise the price so that miners will buy up A4s like crazy and signal SegWit. It is symbiotic effect and both parties need each to act.

Ethereum is an investment for those who believe killer apps other than just payment systems and value transfer (e.g. finance), are going to very important. Those investing Ethereum aren't doing so just for Raiden. They are investing because Ethereum has the chance of finding other killer apps for blockchains given all the smart app experimentation going on by many different groups decentralized.

Yet Bitcoiners want first and foremost a stable, secure value store and transfer blockchain that can scale. Then they want to add some other things such as those Blockstream is working such as anonymity, Rootstock smart contracts, etc.. Blockstream will not be able to move as fast as Ethereum though. Yet Bitcoiners prioritize stability, focus, and security.

And what else can they choose? The other altcoin shitcoins have no chance at all of being the chosen one. Monero has a little bit of relevance also, but I think their model of volunteer development will be far too slow to compete effectively.

Nobody would rush to accept ltc as payment even if it somehow managed to surpass bitcoin, not having any usage is it's real problem (it wasn't for bitcoin before 2014-2015 because it was a novelty either way).

Fundamental economics trumps marketing.

You'll be surprised how fast Bitpay can add a Litecoin payment option which instantly integrates given that merchants get paid in fiat.

Also Lightning Networks is about banks creating ecoins out of thin air (private fractional reserve) and loaning them to the masses. So the traditional (or modern replacements of) banks are the ones who are going to drive massive adoption. This is a critically important point.

Regarding Ripple, I'll defer to the largest Bitcoin whale's analysis:

What I mean is that Ripple is broken in the sense of severe congenital defects, the sort that cause abortion before gestation could in any way conceivably complete. Specifically :

Fatal congenital defect #1. Ripple requires any participant to trust other participants blindly. This is to say, if you trust X person to Y sum this doesn't mean that your trust is rescinded should X issue more than Y worth of debt. It simply means X may issue an infinite volume of debt and you unconditionally promise to accept Y of that. Just like that.

Fatal congenital defect #2. If #1 above somehow didn't kill the thing (for argument's sake), there's absolutely no way for you to receive compensation for the liquidity you provide. Conceivably no matter who X is, be it Russ Meyer or the very Bank of England in its heyday, as long as you take on its debt you're entitled to some sort of compensation for this. At least that's how things work in sane land, since forever. Not in Ripple, however. Your trust is unremunerated, which makes Ripple the only repo market in the history of finance working on 0% interest rates. Not even the FED pumping liquidity through the special bank windows did something like this.

Fatal congenital defect #3. If #1 and #2 above somehow didn't kill it (veering beyond the absurd by now), Ripple averages out all debt. You beg my pardon ? Good for you.

So, suppose Ripple was being used by Ben Bernanke, Christine Lagarde and Lou Jiwei, alongside a number of people randomly picked off the street. You'd sanely expect to be able to buy either BBdollars or Anondollars, separately, as distinct items. Right ? And then CLeuros and LJyuans as opposed to RandomChinesePersonIOU.

Well... that's not how Ripple works. As long as you trust both Lou Jiwei and some random Chinese dude, any people who trust the random dude and hold LJ's yuans can exchange LJ's yuans for any random dude's yuans that you hold.ii Or, as the case may be, the other way around. Always, always the other way around. So what happens when you find yourself trying to pay for a cab ride with what you thought were actual dollars but upon examination turn out to be pieces of paper with "DELLOR" scribbled in pink marker arcoss one side ? Awww, I guess you shouldn't have trusted your boss because he decided to trust his 5 year old daughter and now lookyiii. You've got a blue eye and the cab driver looks just about ready to give you another one.

Basically this boneheaded "everything's a Ripple" approach opens the entire space to the problem that lemon laws try to solve. Let's revisit that for a second, for the benefit of the completely clueless idiots who think it's their place to "create" and "innovate" retarded shit like thisiv.

So, inasmuch as used cars go, it is expensive for buyers to find the actual value of the item. Thus on any specified item buyers make offers based on a guess as to what the average value of a used car would be at any given time. Sellers either know this or soon find out (by being lowballed on good used cars) and soon enough only introduce into the market cars that are objectively worth less than the perceived average. This over time lowers the average, lowering the buyer expectation (and thus price offered) which further lowers the seller incentive and soon enough the only used cars you can buy are refurbished lawnmowers.

This is the problem that lemon laws try to solve. They fail.

So does Ripple. RIPv.

[Seansky]

Mailed some of these pools and asked about segwit, but it will probably take a while.

Can you be more specific?

Pools don't have much say in this. Miners do.

Miners can change to a pool which signals SegWit because miners will earn more with a higher Litecoin price, because the supply of Litecoin mining hardware is limited. The newer ASICs are already out-of-stock. It is only the older A4 ASICs which are not sold out yet (but will be soon enough if the price continues to rise). The miners who already have mining equipment will be making a fortune. So they will signal SeqWit or end up with an unprofitable ASIC that they can't use.

Well if you're honest about your 40-50$+ ltc and not just hype, then i really doubt that.

Actually I am serious about $100+ within a year (probably sooner).

Unless SegWit activation fails, but I highly doubt it. There isn't any other choice. These small scale miners can't mine Ethereum in the future.

Miners aren't going to cut their own throat. Vitalik is switching to PoS. These miners need something they can mine at a good profit. Miners can buy an old A4 and mine LTC profitably now given the recent price rise. Why would they buy more GPUs to mine Ethereum. And they can't mine BTC profitably any more.

I guess they can also choose Zcash or Zcash Classic if they go the GPU route. I deduce by its omission (and my study of Cryptonite) that GPU is not as advantageous on Monero? But GPU supply isn't probably as constrained as ASIC supply, thus miners will earn much more profit by buying an A4 and signaling SegWit on Litecoin (because difficulty will thus also be constrained and keep up with the rising price on Litecoin). It is just economics. It seems inevitable and unstoppable.

Yeah it might take a while, but the more the Litecoin price goes up, the more miners are going to be jumping to purchase the remaining A4s and signal SegWit. Yet I suspect that some majors such as BTCC are just waiting for the independent mining to signal some level say 70% before they decide to throw their hashrate towards it to push it over the 75% hump. Inherently they are waiting for the Bitcoiners to give up on any changes to Bitcoin and start to argue for SegWit on Litecoin more aggressively. It is a process of Bitcoiners learning about reality and economics. Also for the other miners to learn this economics which I am explaining. Perhaps some of them don't even realize that Bitcoin will maximize value by enabling SegWit on Litecoin.

Don't forget what btc has but nobody else has: the brand, the first one, the recognition, and thanks to that, it is accepted in places. LTC isn't accepted anywhere and neither does it have any technological features to back it up, therefore people may follow fomo to about 1billion perhaps, but then i don't see why would whales pump it at a loss, don't forget there are some really hungry bagholders in ltc.

When Blockstream decides they have to switch to Core, then everything will flow quite quickly. An activation of SegWit on Litecoin and a continued stalemate on Bitcoin with Ethereum releasing LN clone (Raiden) will light a fire under Blockstream's collective butts. I read some Core devs had already signaled working with Litecoin. Litecoin has been running stably for 6 years. Bugcoin Unlimited seems to have a bug every other week lately.

The Chinese are the boss now. This is the new reality in the world.

Who is losing by raising the LTC price? Any whales who buy in now and ride the revaluation upwards of Litecoin to its correct market value, will be increasing their BTC when they trade back at $50, because Bitcoin will probably only double during the same time period. Of course LTC will be more volatile.

There is enough liquidity in LTC and that is the main factor. When LTC had its first spike, it was because LTC was the only coin (with sufficient liquidity) for the BTC whales to lockin their profits when Bitcoin exceeded $1000 for the first time, without exiting to fiat.

There are only 4 projects in top 15 that aim to become currencies, excepting bitcoin and tether. All of them are in the same position as LTC, they are alts but they have either some nice feature like anonymity or they incentivise bagholding via masternodes. I really don't believe LTC can start the kind of fomo even dash can have. If they do that, they will lose alot of money.

Bitcoiners decide. If Bitcoin can't scale, they have to choose something. And they sure aren't going to endorse Dash nor Ethereum. Since they can't have scaling directly on Bitcoin, they will have to choose the next best option which is Litecoin (and probably change the currency unit to "ecoin" which is the latter part of the Litecoin name). And "ecoin" is a better token name for the masses than "bitcoin".

Ethereum is an investment for those who believe killer apps other than just payment systems and value transfer (e.g. finance), are going to very important. Those investing Ethereum aren't doing so just for Raiden. They are investing because Ethereum has the chance of finding other killer apps for blockchains given all the smart app experimentation going on by many different groups decentralized.

Yet Bitcoiners want first and foremost a stable, secure value store and transfer blockchain that can scale. Then they want to add some other things such as those Blockstream is working such as anonymity, Rootstock smart contracts, etc.. Blockstream will not be able to move as fast as Ethereum though. Yet Bitcoiners prioritize stability, focus, and security.

And what else can they choose? The other altcoin shitcoins have no chance at all of being the chosen one. Monero has a little bit of relevance also, but I think their model of volunteer development will be far too slow to compete effectively.

Nobody would rush to accept ltc as payment even if it somehow managed to surpass bitcoin, not having any usage is it's real problem (it wasn't for bitcoin before 2014-2015 because it was a novelty either way).

You'll be surprised how fast Bitpay can add a Litecoin payment option which instantly integrates given that merchants get paid in fiat.

Also Lightning Networks is about banks creating ecoins out of thin air (private fractional reserve) and loaning them to the masses. So the traditional (or modern replacements of) banks are the ones who are going to drive massive adoption. This is a critically important point.

Regarding Ripple, I'll defer to the largest Bitcoin whale's analysis:

What I mean is that Ripple is broken in the sense of severe congenital defects, the sort that cause abortion before gestation could in any way conceivably complete. Specifically :

Fatal congenital defect #1. Ripple requires any participant to trust other participants blindly. This is to say, if you trust X person to Y sum this doesn't mean that your trust is rescinded should X issue more than Y worth of debt. It simply means X may issue an infinite volume of debt and you unconditionally promise to accept Y of that. Just like that.

Fatal congenital defect #2. If #1 above somehow didn't kill the thing (for argument's sake), there's absolutely no way for you to receive compensation for the liquidity you provide. Conceivably no matter who X is, be it Russ Meyer or the very Bank of England in its heyday, as long as you take on its debt you're entitled to some sort of compensation for this. At least that's how things work in sane land, since forever. Not in Ripple, however. Your trust is unremunerated, which makes Ripple the only repo market in the history of finance working on 0% interest rates. Not even the FED pumping liquidity through the special bank windows did something like this.

Fatal congenital defect #3. If #1 and #2 above somehow didn't kill it (veering beyond the absurd by now), Ripple averages out all debt. You beg my pardon ? Good for you.

So, suppose Ripple was being used by Ben Bernanke, Christine Lagarde and Lou Jiwei, alongside a number of people randomly picked off the street. You'd sanely expect to be able to buy either BBdollars or Anondollars, separately, as distinct items. Right ? And then CLeuros and LJyuans as opposed to RandomChinesePersonIOU.

Well... that's not how Ripple works. As long as you trust both Lou Jiwei and some random Chinese dude, any people who trust the random dude and hold LJ's yuans can exchange LJ's yuans for any random dude's yuans that you hold.ii Or, as the case may be, the other way around. Always, always the other way around. So what happens when you find yourself trying to pay for a cab ride with what you thought were actual dollars but upon examination turn out to be pieces of paper with "DELLOR" scribbled in pink marker arcoss one side ? Awww, I guess you shouldn't have trusted your boss because he decided to trust his 5 year old daughter and now lookyiii. You've got a blue eye and the cab driver looks just about ready to give you another one.

Basically this boneheaded "everything's a Ripple" approach opens the entire space to the problem that lemon laws try to solve. Let's revisit that for a second, for the benefit of the completely clueless idiots who think it's their place to "create" and "innovate" retarded shit like thisiv.

So, inasmuch as used cars go, it is expensive for buyers to find the actual value of the item. Thus on any specified item buyers make offers based on a guess as to what the average value of a used car would be at any given time. Sellers either know this or soon find out (by being lowballed on good used cars) and soon enough only introduce into the market cars that are objectively worth less than the perceived average. This over time lowers the average, lowering the buyer expectation (and thus price offered) which further lowers the seller incentive and soon enough the only used cars you can buy are refurbished lawnmowers.

This is the problem that lemon laws try to solve. They fail.

So does Ripple. RIPv.

Wow that was quite long explanation. I hope that what you said about LTC will come true. So based on my understanding of what you said if LTC price doesn't go up zcash or zcash classic's price will go up instead and it will be based in how miners decides? Correct me if I'm wrong to what I understand. I will follow the speculation rule you stated in the title though, buy when others are irrationally pessimistic or to cautious. Hoping to have gains following this rule.

[iamnotback]

Any other things missing here?

Because Bitcoin will never scale without altcoins. No significant protocol changes will ever be made to Bitcoin. Bitcoiners need to get this nailed into their thick skulls. Read the following:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1663070.msg18424568#msg18424568

Bitcoin will achieve maximum value by enabling SegWit on Litecoin. There is no other option going forward. The above linked post explains why in detail.

I am disagree. I think bitcoin can be on the top without altcoins and all of them are weak competitors which not affect on bitcoin's price at all.

Bitcoin is created first and it doesnot need altcoins.

You're thinking is incorrect. Read my prior post in this thread, click the link I provided, and pay attention. You're going to learn some new things.

Altcoins are good competitors to Bitcoin and I think it just needs it.

Incorrect. Most of the speculation value from altcoins ends up in BTC, not in the altcoins. Altcoins are complementary to BTC. The reason BTC percentage of market cap is diving lately is because Bitcoiners are trying to force protocol changes to Bitcoin, instead of doing it on Litecoin, and so no progress is being made at all. Stuck in the mud.

Bitcoiners need to re-orient their thinking. Read my prior post and click the link and read more.

[iamnotback]

Wow that was quite long explanation. I hope that what you said about LTC will come true. So based on my understanding of what you said if LTC price doesn't go up zcash or zcash classic's price will go up instead and it will be based in how miners decides? Correct me if I'm wrong to what I understand. I will follow the speculation rule you stated in the title though, buy when others are irrationally pessimistic or to cautious. Hoping to have gains following this rule.

I presume the supply of GPUs is not constrained. Thus the difficulty for the GPU coins will always rise to match the price. Thus GPU mining won't be exceptionally profitable, especially for the marginal profit miners.

But the entire point I've been making is that the supply of Litecoin ASICs is very constrained. The newest most efficient models are sold out and the other less efficient A4s are limited to old stock.

So this means that the difficulty (hashrate) for Litecoin will not rise commensurately with the price, and thus those miners who choose to buy Litecoin ASICs will be making a fortune if SegWit is activated (or the market believes it will be activated). This is a very unique advantage for Litecoin because it is the only coin that has an ASIC and is incredibly undervalued!!!

People are so slow-minded. I have to explain to them like ABCs. Hehe. No offense but I had already implied that in my posts 2 days ago. But most people can't figure out what I mean unless I carefully explain it. No problem I know that people need more explanation before they will "get it".

Economics is complex. Sometimes I would rather just think and not have to explain because my brain moves much faster than my fingers can type. 

[iamnotback]

One more post trying to get Bitcoiners to wake up to reality:

While some of you waste your time trying to figure out what all the irrelevant noise of signaling on Bitcoin doesn't mean, the reality is something that will require re-orienting your thinking.

Bitcoin will never scale without Litecoin. No significant protocol changes will ever be made to Bitcoin. Bitcoiners need to get this nailed into their thick skulls. Read the following:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1663070.msg18424568#msg18424568

Bitcoin will achieve maximum value by enabling SegWit on Litecoin. There is no other option going forward. The above linked post explains why in detail.

Bitcoin was designed by Satoshi such that the vested interests would be that no one can change the protocol. No change is ever coming to Bitcoin. The sooner you realize this, the sooner we can get unstuck from the mud. Those of you who continue to facilitate this illusion of change coming to Bitcoin's protocol are obstacles in the way of progress.

Altcoins are good competitors to Bitcoin and I think it just needs it.

Incorrect. Most of the speculation value from altcoins ends up in BTC, not in the altcoins. Altcoins are complementary to BTC. The reason BTC percentage of market cap is diving lately is because Bitcoiners are trying to force protocol changes to Bitcoin, instead of doing it on Litecoin, and so no progress is being made at all. Stuck in the mud.

Bitcoiners need to re-orient their thinking. Read my prior post and click the link and read more.

Bitcoin will never scale without Litecoin. No significant protocol changes will ever be made to Bitcoin. Bitcoiners need to get this nailed into their thick skulls. Read the following:

Bitcoin will achieve maximum value by enabling SegWit on Litecoin. There is no other option going forward. The above linked post explains why in detail.

How would this be possible without some type of protocol change that allows stuff such as atomic swaps? Without that the chains are stuck as separate entities.

You apparently don't understand finance. The tail doesn't wag the dog.

You guys don't read all of my posts, thus you force me to post copies of my posts all over the place:

Once I realized Bitcoin is never going to allow any major changes to its protocol, then I started to think about what would Blockstream do. That is when I was ripe for realizing what the LTC spike in price is probably about. Of course most of the Bitcoiners are stuck on this concept that Bitcoin has to scale, which I have realized is entirely unnecessary (and you still need to understand this) because Litecoin can scale yet Bitcoin will still capture the lion's share of the value of the scaling of Litecoin.

I explained why days ago. But y'all don't pay attention.

Any way, I don't mind providing you the link above.

Bitcoin is a currency not money.

Incorrect. You don't understand finance. The tail doesn't wag the dog. Read this.

Bitcoin is not a medium-of-exchange. It is a unit-of-account and a store-of-value. Litecoin will be the medium-of-exchange. Small blocks will make Bitcoin for settlement amongst power brokers of finance.

Well, at some point, they need to leave the middle ground and make a decision. I think it will be better if this will made as soon as possible. People are getting tired because of these and it will not be healthy if they will drag this for so long. Or maybe, they are just playing with both BU and SegWit while at the end of the day, nothing will happen?  

There will never be a middle ground.

Correct, nothing will ever change on Bitcoin. But Litecoin...

Core hasn't been keeping the system updated, and their refusal of further updates and generally increasing the Block size is alarming and drives support away. The bitcoin unlimited bound failure doesn't lift any responsibility away from the core devs..

Entirely incorrect.

Bitcoin will never be updated and doesn't need to be updated.

Please read my posts in this thread and click the links do some extensive reading and thinking. You will learn about the absolute importance of Litecoin for Bitcoin's future.

Until you re-orient your thinking to the reality, you will be hopelessly confused.

No disrespect intended. I am trying to guide you to the truth, but you have to be willing to click and read a lot.

Core hasn't been keeping the system updated,

There's a very steady stream of updates from Core. They've also provided the protocol change that they think is best. It's sitting there waiting to be used right now.

Waiting to be used on Litecoin. Never will be activated on Bitcoin. Satoshi designed the game theory of Bitcoin so that the vested interests would never be able to agree on modifying the protocol. Otherwise Bitcoin would have no value as power broker money. Please learn that the tail does not wag the dog in finance. Go read please.

This is bouncing up and down, but slowly moving upwards. It just exceeded 59% for the first time:

http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php

It is inevitable. The hard-headed who are late are going to be butt-hurt and backsplaining.

[thelibertycap]

I agree with iamnotback. I have been looking at Litecoin for some time now. Now I can see even more clearly than back when the first run started - a long time ago.
Thanks for additional insight.

[Seansky]

I presume the supply of GPUs is not constrained. Thus the difficulty for the GPU coins will always rise to match the price. Thus GPU mining won't be exceptionally profitable, especially for the marginal profit miners.

But the entire point I've been making is that the supply of Litecoin ASICs is very constrained. The newest most efficient models are sold out and the other less efficient A4s are limited to old stock.

So this means that the difficulty (hashrate) for Litecoin will not rise commensurately with the price, and thus those miners who choose to buy Litecoin ASICs will be making a fortune if SegWit is activated (or the market believes it will be activated). This is a very unique advantage for Litecoin because it is the only coin that has an ASIC and is incredibly undervalued!!!

People are so slow-minded. I have to explain to them like ABCs. Hehe. No offense but I had already implied that in my posts 2 days ago. But most people can't figure out what I mean unless I carefully explain it. No problem I know that people need more explanation before they will "get it".

Economics is complex. Sometimes I would rather just think and not have to explain because my brain moves much faster than my fingers can type.  

Thanks for explaining it too me you really helped a lot. Also sorry too, no offense but I have not read your post 2 days ago that implies what you are explaining to me in the post quoted above since I am not reading that much when I open a thread, I am just reading the original post and also the recent posts. I agree with you though that economics really is complex and somewhat hard to understand so it needs to be explained before people get it.

[thejaytiesto]

Almost nailed the top again:


Waiting for a little correction to 710ish to get back in. Now that it's confirmed f2pool will maintain his signaling i'll be taking less risks. The graph is showing a nice uptrend already.

We'll maybe see a nice dip at $10 dollars because all the smart people that bought at 1 dollar will be seeing x10 gains, too succulent to not drop some.

@iamnotback your theory of a monolitic bitcoin with a more flexible litecoin makes sense, also Charlie Lee is pro segwit, pro core, pro blockstream etc himself which is good.

The thing is, what about UASF? what if bitcoin enables segwit through UASF anyway?

[Pierre 2]

Wow this rule is really great. I completely agree.
When everyone was too HYPED like "DISASTER" some people think its opportunity.
I love this phase of economy, its not fair all right, its manipulative, yes, but it works for wise.