What happens "IF" LTCs price is higher than BTC?

[papaminer]

Will BFL/AVALON and other btc miner company commit suicide?

I believe those BTC ASIC miners cannot do scrypt... lol...

so what will those ASIC owners do? kill BFL or AVALON for making them wait for so long until price is already very low?

[ElectricMucus]

Most likely it's gonna be dumped to oblivion. Unless there is a reason for it, for example we are having this discussion in a Litecoin forum, it's Litecoin which is in the news, and so on...
Get the picture?

[DeathAndTaxes]

BFL and Avalon would be selling Scrypt ASICs.  Avalon shipping in 1 3 months and BFL in 1 3 years.

[ElectricMucus]

Also option #2 is BTC price "catches up" with LTC price, which is entirely possible.

[mmitech]

BFL and Avalon would be selling Scrypt ASICs.  Avalon shipping in 1 3 months and BFL in 1 3 years.

  i see what you did there

[cdog]

I dont think it can catch up unless BTC gets 51%'d, because BTC is so far ahead. But it can play a great role as a #2.

BTC as reserve currency and for major purchases: house, car, property, million dollar international payments. LTC for buying coffee.

LTC/Scrypt is also a hedge against BTC/SHA256 and as such helps to secure the entire cryptocurrency economy.

[DeathAndTaxes]

BTC as reserve currency and for major purchases: house, car, property, million dollar international payments. LTC for buying coffee.

I used BTC to buy a $5 steam game.  It worked just as well as major purchases.  Why would I want/need a second currency just to handle smaller purchases?

LTC/Scrypt is also a hedge against BTC/SHA256 and as such helps to secure the entire cryptocurrency economy.

There is some truth to this however a partial break of SHA256 doesn't materially affect mining.  If people can mine 100x more efficiently then difficulty will simply rise 100x.  On the other hand a complete break of SHA256 (such that collisions can be found trivially easy) presents a danger to the security of addresses and LTC has chosen to use the same address structure as Bitcoin making it equally vulnerable.  The good news is the likelihood of that is very low, and the likelihood of it happening quickly before changes can be made is even less likely.

Of all of the cryptographic primitives used in any cryptocurrency it is the public key cryptography which history has shown is the most vulnerable.  It is vulnerable not just to future Quantum Cryptography but also to improved cryptoanalysis.  Take RSA for example.  It is now possible to break 768 bit RSA keys making 1024 bit keys vulnerable to attack within the next decade.  Most systems using RSA have moved to 2048 or 3764 bit keys to provide improved resistance to advancement in cryptoanalysis.

A future alt coin which uses a different public key cryptographic system would provide a better hedge/insurance then one which uses a different mining algorithm.

[btcrich]

BTC as reserve currency and for major purchases: house, car, property, million dollar international payments. LTC for buying coffee.

I used BTC to buy a $5 steam game.  It worked just as well as major purchases.  Why would I want/need a second currency just to handle smaller purchases?

Lower transactions fees for small purchases.  Faster confirmations.  Finally, believe it or not, Litecoin is actually more secure than Bitcoin at the moment when considering the cost to successfully attack the network.

[rovchris]

BTC as reserve currency and for major purchases: house, car, property, million dollar international payments. LTC for buying coffee.

I used BTC to buy a $5 steam game.  It worked just as well as major purchases.  Why would I want/need a second currency just to handle smaller purchases?

Why were both gold and silver used as currencies and not just gold.

Realistically there was not enough gold to go around - If you total the number of dollars in circulation I am sure there are more cents in circulation than satoshi's even when all 21 million coins are mined. If you then totalled all the world currencies and the smallest division of that currency it would dwarf the number of Satoshi's.

Basically there are not enough bitcoins to support a world economy. So unless the upper limit is changed a complimentary currency would be required.

[cryto4rig]

If Litecoin goes higher than Bitcoin I will be dancing in the street   "Its peanut butter jelly time!"

[jdebunt]

i'ld love to see this happen in my lifetime, but i very much doubt it

[juve4v]

BFL and Avalon would be selling Scrypt ASICs.  Avalon shipping in 1 3 months and BFL in 1 3 years.

This!

[smoothie]

BFL and Avalon would be selling Scrypt ASICs.  Avalon shipping in 1 3 months and BFL in 1 3 years.

D&T thanks for the laugh. Hahahahaha

[smoothie]

BTC as reserve currency and for major purchases: house, car, property, million dollar international payments. LTC for buying coffee.

I used BTC to buy a $5 steam game.  It worked just as well as major purchases.  Why would I want/need a second currency just to handle smaller purchases?

Well that is just you. It appears the free market has spoken about utilizing a secondary crypto for purchase online.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Why were both gold and silver used as currencies and not just gold.

Realistically there was not enough gold to go around

No that had nothing to do with it.  Silver (and Copper) were used because there is a limit on how small gold coins can be used in any practical manner.

The US gold dollar for example is only 75% of the diameter of a dime and weighs about half as much.  Imagine how easy it would be to lose such a coin.  The smaller a coin is the easier it becomes to counterfeit or reduce.  Scales (especially in 1850) are only so accurate.  A coin 0.1 grams light would be very hard to detect but with the US dollar weighing only 1.6 grams it would mean almost 4% of the value had been shaved off.  Worse the average wage in 1850 was $0.18 so a gold dollar represented about 5.5 days of labor.  That would be like today having a coin smaller than a dime worth ~$700.  Now try to imagine even smaller gold coins and imagine doing so with technology (for purposes of minting, validating, exchanging, transporting) circa 1800s.  How would you pay for a penny worth of nails with gold?  Someone is going to mint a 0.1mm gold coin (that is the diameter of a human hair by the way). 



Coins with more base metal were developed because given the constraints of physical tokens it was easier to use larger tokens of less value.

If you total the number of dollars in circulation I am sure there are more cents in circulation than satoshi's even when all 21 million coins are mined. If you then totalled all the world currencies and the smallest division of that currency it would dwarf the number of Satoshi's. Basically there are not enough bitcoins to support a world economy. So unless the upper limit is changed a complimentary currency would be required.

The amount of global currency in on the order of $4T USD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_(currency) ).  That would be ~400 trillion pennies ("cents").  Bitcoin has 2,100 trillion Satoshis (21M BTC * 1E8).  If Bitcoin hypothetically replaced all global currencies (a pipe dream but we can consider this an upper limit) that would put the value of 1 BTC at ~$200,000 USD (2012 dollars) and the value of 1 Satoshi at 0.2 US cents (or 5 S = $0.01).

Still, the divisibility of Bitcoin can be increased if necessary with a hard fork.  If there ever came a time that such increased divisibility was necessary it would be a fork that could be made with overwhelming support (it preserves the value of existing holdings in a non-inflationary manner).  It is unlikely more than 2 quadrillion units will ever be necessary though.  Even today there is little need for divisibilty of the dollar to the 2 decimal places.   It rarely affect pricing.  Have you ever decided not to buy something because it was 1 cent more than you were willing to pay.  The cent simply lives on due to inertia.  Many other countries already use currencies with less divisibility without any adverse effect. 

BTW I am not saying Bitcoin will be the only cryptocurrency, it may have long term competitors with significant share or it may be replaced completely by something superior, or we may see specialized cryptocurrencies develop which carve out a niche (i.e. a CC designed around micro transactions, a CC designed around improved anonymity, etc).  Regardless of what the future holds it won't be because Bitcoin needs a "silver" or that there aren't enough coins to go around.

[DeathAndTaxes]

BTC as reserve currency and for major purchases: house, car, property, million dollar international payments. LTC for buying coffee.

I used BTC to buy a $5 steam game.  It worked just as well as major purchases.  Why would I want/need a second currency just to handle smaller purchases?

Well that is just you. It appears the free market has spoken about utilizing a secondary crypto for purchase online.

Once again I am not saying "dont use LTC".  Hell it is possible Bitcoin fails and LTC succeeds (improbable IMHO but possible).  I am just pointing out that if LTC succeeds it will be based on its own merits and not due to the dubious rationalizations in this thread (i.e. not enough Satoshis to go around, there needs to be a "silver", Bitcoin will only be used for large purchases for some unknown reason, SHA is broken, etc).

BTW the free market has said that the overwhelming majority of people agree with me.  Both on the relative value of the money supplies and on practicality.  I have never had in buying or selling goods or services (even $5 steam game) had someone who would not accept BTC but would accept LTC.  Maybe that day will come but it hasn't happened yet.  Lots of places however do accept BTC but don't accept LTC.  I bought a $1,200 domain on namecheap using BTC but they had no option to pay for it using LTC ... at least not yet.  

[cbeast]

Maybe then someone will start accepting LTC as payment.

[papaminer]

Maybe then someone will start accepting LTC as payment.

ain't that a bit of a reverse?

accepting LTC as payment should go first...

then... the price will go higher...

[FiiNALiZE]

BTC has been falling pretty rapidly these past few days.

The LTC:BTC ratio has gone up by nearly 0.01 in the past month.

The next few months should be pretty interesting.

With many GPU farms moving to LTC since ASICs are out now, and with Gox adding LTC soon (hopefully), who knows, LTC might be worth something soon

Many of the merchants who accept BTC are either accepting LTC now too or considering it for the future.

[cryto4rig]

The next few months are going to be very interesting indeed.