PREDICTION: A SHA256 ALT coin will become as big a success as Litecoin (1-2Yrs)

[CoinHoarder]

I would like to preface this with the fact that I was one of the few people that saw the potential in Litecoin back in 2012. When everyone was busy selling their old GPUs and mining hardware due to the upcoming Bitcoin reward halving, I was instead busy buying the cheap hardware to mine Litecoins. Unfortunately, I went through some hard times late 2012 and early 2013, where I was unemployed and had to live off of my stash of crypto coins. Otherwise, I would be a millionaire right now (I was mining 500-1000+ LTC/day back then.) I kind of look at the Litecoin boat as having already passed. I still think it is a good investment, but it will not provide you the crazy returns that investing into Litecoin at $0.10 would have brought considering the current value is $2.34.

My original line of thinking when speculating on Litecoin was that soon GPU mining was going to become unprofitable on Bitcoin and there would be many new people switching over to Litecoin. New miners means the network is more secure, it adds people into the Litecoin economy, and provides more people that would want to see/help Litecoin be further developed (due to their new ownership of some Litecoins.) Thus, increasing the value of Litecoin (or speculated value), because of these factors and probably many more that I can't think of off the top of my head... any benefit of adding new people to the community could bring.

I see this same situation forming in Bitcoinland again and I expect the result to play out similarly, although there are a couple differences this time. The Bitcoin network difficulty is going up so fast so quick, that soon ASICs made on larger process nodes (60-100+nm) will become unprofitable in 2014 due to the amount of power they consume versus ASICs built on smaller process nodes (<60nm). This will leave many Bitcoin ASIC owners owning a paper weight. ASICs can only do what they are made to do, spit out SHA256 hashes- there is no other use for these ASICs.

Just like the GPU miners making lemonade out of lemons by mining Scrypt coins once their GPUs were unprofitable on Bitcoin, large process node ASIC users will do the same with SHA256 ALT coins. This large influx of new miners and users of SHA256 ALT coins will have a similar affect to what the new GPU miners did for Litecoin.

Keep in mind most of this post is speculation. I'm not sure which SHA256 coin is going to win the lottery, if any of them out of the ones that currently exist. Perhaps there will be a new one that comes out inbetween now and then that actually has some innovation and advantages to Bitcoin. All I am saying is the next coin to be entering massive hyper adoption will be a SHA256 coin, mark my words.

Thoughts/opinions welcome. Tell me I'm wrong, tell me I'm right. I love to speculate and discuss potential life changing investment strategies. I'm not in this to make chump change.. I want to buy an island after I cash out all my coins, not just a fancy dinner.

[glongsword]

Sorry but your analogy doesn't really hold: The reason Litecoin took off, is, as you pointed out, people could use former-bitcoin-hardware to mine them, while the bitcoin mining ASIC's couldn't be used.  2nd generation ASICs, on the other hand, can mine sha256 alt-coins just as well as 1st gen, so there's no reason to expect people with 2nd gen's not to mine them if they are more profitable at the time than Bitcoin.  Thus those with 1st gen ASICs will have no advantage at mining anything, and will basically have fancy paperweights.

[01BTC10]

Don't forget that a simple SHA256 Bitcoin clone can be merge mined alongside Bitcoin like it's the case with Namecoin or Terracoin.

[CoinHoarder]

Sorry but your analogy doesn't really hold: The reason Litecoin took off, is, as you pointed out, people could use former-bitcoin-hardware to mine them, while the bitcoin mining ASIC's couldn't be used. 2nd generation ASICs, on the other hand, can mine sha256 alt-coins just as well as 1st gen, so there's no reason to expect people with 2nd gen's not to mine them if they are more profitable at the time than Bitcoin.  Thus those with 1st gen ASICs will have no advantage at mining anything, and will basically have fancy paperweights.

I get what you are saying, and perhaps for the reasons you mentioned, this will not have as substantial affect on SHA256 ALT coins as GPUs had for Litecoin. You make a good point that they will have to compete with gen2 ASICs and will never be as efficient or powerful as them. Whereas, Bitcoin ASICs can't be used to mine Litecoin so it is a bit of a safe haven for them for now, but Bitcoin ASICs gen2 can do everything gen1 could do. I agree those situations are completely different and perhaps I overstated the effect that unprofitable ASICs will have on SHA256 ALTS for this reason.

However, I'm not convinced that everyone will just throw their equipment in the trash after it is unprofitable. You think the people that are left with the fancy paper weights are just going to admit defeat and throw their ASICs in the trash? I think that they will look for some way to use these machines, and this use will be mining SHA256 ALTs. Sure, there will not be as much profit in it as mining Bitcoins, but there will be a small profit there. Also, if the influx of new users has the same effect on SHA256 ALT's prices, then there could be a huge potential profit.

[CoinHoarder]

Don't forget that a simple SHA256 Bitcoin clone can be merge mined alongside Bitcoin like it's the case with Namecoin or Terracoin.

I wasn't referring to merge mined coins when saying "SHA256 Alt Coins." Although, I wouldn't be surprised if one is as successful as Litecoin as well. I think Namecoin is a wonderful idea if fully implemented, also ZeroCoin looks very promising if it can come to fruition.

[01BTC10]

My point is that if a coin is profitable to mine with gen1 ASIC then gen2 ASIC can merge mine it for no additional cost thus making it unprofitable for gen1. Not like Litecoin that can't be mined with SHA256 ASIC.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post.

[CoinHoarder]

My point is that if a coin is profitable to mine with gen1 ASIC then gen2 ASIC can merge mine it for no additional cost thus making it unprofitable for gen1. Not like Litecoin that can't be mined with SHA256 ASIC.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post.

I don't think I explained myself thoroughly in the OP.

When gen1 ASICs become unprofitable, people will be looking for a way to make them profitable again. There will be a huge incentive for someone that wants to create a truly innovative SHA-256 coin. I will lay out the basic business plan here:

1. Buy unprofitable ASICs for pennies on the dollar.
2. Design and develop a ground breaking SHA-256 coin. Better than all ALTs existing and better than Bitcoin itself.
3. Hash power will be split between Bitcoin and this new better alternative by speculators and people that believe in this new coin being better than Bitcoin. The split in hash power will allow the overlay to make gen1 ASICs profitable because hashing power is split in between Bitcoin and this new alternative coin.

For instance, assuming a 66% monthly increase in difficulty, an Avalon will be unprofitable on May 14th when the network difficulty is 4863 million. If half the hash power switches to a new innovative SHA-256 coin, that would effectively bring Bitcoin difficulty down 50% to 2431.5 Million and you're back to making money again. Plus, maybe this new ALT coins is so much better than Bitcoin, that it is more valuable to mine than Bitcoin itself to due to high exchange prices from speculators. So, it could be a greater than 50% reduction in hash power in that case.

I have been right about a few things since I came on these forums and started posting. 1. Litecoin, 2. BFL being shady, I hope these won't be the last either. It is somewhat of a wild prediction, but I like throwing as many conspiracy theories out there and seeing which ones stick. Then I can bump this thread in a year and bump my chest if I'm right.   jk (or... not).

Also, it doesn't even have to be a new SHA256 ALT coin. Perhaps a lot of development is done to an existing one to where it is more valuable to the community. Huge market shifts (UP!) in the value of SHA256 ALT coins could dramatically change the profitability of SHA256 mining.

[lajz99]

I've been doing a little thinking about this as well.  Will be following along to hear what others think.

[mercSuey]

Your reasoning seems to make sense and that's exactly why it will not happen, IMHO.  Because we're privy to the trend.  If this speculation of yours were to come to fruition it would not happen in a stealthy manner.  And the difficulty will adjust much, much quicker than it did for LTC.  So perhaps there are returns to be made, but they won't be 2500% returns--no where close to it actually (again, IMHO).  In fact, it'll be coins with tight supply to see absurd returns, either from their specs or because diff is way up there (BTC).  No, I think the same way people are regretting not buying up BTC when it was a few dollars will be regretting they didn't buy it up when it was 100, because I honestly think it'll be north of a thousand in 1-2 years.  And the tighter supply coins will see comparable returns.  YOU mark my words.  

[calian]

I think Sunny King is opposed to having merged mining for (SHA-256) PPC. See
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=126802.msg1346382#msg1346382
and
http://www.ppcointalk.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=2ehjsvpmr404htpljqfgaedg37&topic=265.msg1371#msg1371

So this is an example of the kind of coin you're foreseeing.

[lonesoul]

Your reasoning seems to make sense and that's exactly why it will not happen, IMHO.  Because we're privy to the trend.  If this speculation of yours were to come to fruition it would not happen in a stealthy manner.  And the difficulty will adjust much, much quicker than it did for LTC.  So perhaps there are returns to be made, but they won't be 2500% returns--no where close to it actually (again, IMHO).  In fact, it'll be coins with tight supply to see absurd returns, either from their specs or because diff is way up there (BTC).  No, I think the same way people are regretting not buying up BTC when it was a few dollars will be regretting they didn't buy it up when it was 100, because I honestly think it'll be north of a thousand in 1-2 years.  And the tighter supply coins will see comparable returns.  YOU mark my words.  

People seem to base the price on the current market supply/demand and completely gloss over the rest of the market that its actually aimed at disrupting. (the transaction market)

If bitcoin succeeds in taking over 1% of the transaction market, they will be worth $100,000 per coin. Basis for that statement can be found here:

http://falkvinge.net/2013/03/06/the-target-value-for-bitcoin-is-not-some-50-or-100-it-is-100000-to-1000000/


I thought it was a cracking read and made me think, wow my 1.5 btc might be able to buy my house in the future

hope you enjoy it :-)

[BTCat]

You're watching too much Max Keiser. The exact same content of that article was taken out of one of his discussion video's.

[lucasjkr]

My point is that if a coin is profitable to mine with gen1 ASIC then gen2 ASIC can merge mine it for no additional cost thus making it unprofitable for gen1. Not like Litecoin that can't be mined with SHA256 ASIC.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post.

I don't think I explained myself thoroughly in the OP.

When gen1 ASICs become unprofitable, people will be looking for a way to make them profitable again. There will be a huge incentive for someone that wants to create a truly innovative SHA-256 coin. I will lay out the basic business plan here:

1. Buy unprofitable ASICs for pennies on the dollar.
2. Design and develop a ground breaking SHA-256 coin. Better than all ALTs existing and better than Bitcoin itself.
3. Hash power will be split between Bitcoin and this new better alternative by speculators and people that believe in this new coin being better than Bitcoin. The split in hash power will allow the overlay to make gen1 ASICs profitable because hashing power is split in between Bitcoin and this new alternative coin.
...

Also, it doesn't even have to be a new SHA256 ALT coin. Perhaps a lot of development is done to an existing one to where it is more valuable to the community. Huge market shifts (UP!) in the value of SHA256 ALT coins could dramatically change the profitability of SHA256 mining.

01BTC10's point still stands.

If a first gen ASIC is a money loser when mining BTC, it'll be a money loser on any alt-coin as well. Why? Because if it's NOT a big money loser, then everyone with 2nd Gen ASIC's will pile into that network as well, and push the difficulty up enormously, rendering your Gen-1 chip just as unprofitable to mine with.

Say for example the network reaches the point where running a first gen ASIC earns you negative 25 cents per month (lets's say it gets out 0.01 BTC, but electricity costs you $1.75, but a 2nd gen chip earns .3 BTC at an electricity cost of $0.30).  You "discover" that you can mine CoinX at a profit - the ASIC still costs $1.75 to run, but you earn enough of these new coins that when converted to BTC, you''re earning 0.03 BTC/month. This news will get around rapidly. So you'll have all these owners of 2nd gen chips paying $0.30 for electricity and earning 0.03 BTC per month per chip moving to this new coin. Because, remember, if it's profitable you with a 1st gen, then it's even more someone with a second gen chip, who could theoretically earn 0.09 BTC rather than 0.03 BTC.

So, A, the difficulty rate will skyrocket to the point that your returns will be either nonexistent or negative once again. Or B, the value of the new coin will drop to the point, again, that your 1st Gen ASIC will struggle to break even when compared agains a Gen 2would make.

I think the thing is, you're looking for what is commonly known as "free lunch". Yes, those specials occassionally come to light, but they last an incredibly short amount of time before the market learns about it and adjusts.

Basically, look at the dollar denominated output of a miner and coin. If a miner can mine $10 of bitcoin in a day, then that's basically the cap for any other SHA alt coin. Why? If the same hardware could generate $30 per day for the miners, then every miner would scramble to the new coin and BTC transactions would co unconfirmed for ages.

So, no. There really won't be a use for 1st generation mining equipment once it's reached the end of it's life. That's the whole thing about "Application specific", they're built ONLY to perform the exact calculations that Bitcoin requires. And that's I'm become more and more convinced that this whole thing is a folly. By "thing" I mean hardware mining. No matter how much hashing power gets thrown on the network, the network will always be extremely vultnerable to a dedicated attacker. And transactions will always take minutes and minutes to confirm (the other day, i had to wait almost an hour for a 4 BTC transaction to go through. AND i'd added 0.004 for the miners. But that's a different story.

All that we're doing with ASIC's is spending a LOT of money to stay in the same place. Or to get short term, incremental advantage over oner another. I said it in a different thread, but the failure here is us. None of us are thinking up any real business ideas for Bitcoin, we're all convinced that the easiest and grandest fortunes are to be gotten from mining. If that continues to be the case, we're not going to see the mass adoptions of BTC that we dream about, because why will people choose to convert to Bitcoin if the only purpose is to convert back to fiat when it's time to spend the money>

Enough money is being wasted lining the pockets of Friedcat, BFL, KNC Miner, Avalon and every other person that even whispers that they're thinking about creating a new ASIC. Don't throw even more down the drain trying to scoop up peoples otherwise worthless 1st gen devices when they start getting thrown in the dustheap.

[CoinHoarder]

My point is that if a coin is profitable to mine with gen1 ASIC then gen2 ASIC can merge mine it for no additional cost thus making it unprofitable for gen1. Not like Litecoin that can't be mined with SHA256 ASIC.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post.

I don't think I explained myself thoroughly in the OP.

When gen1 ASICs become unprofitable, people will be looking for a way to make them profitable again. There will be a huge incentive for someone that wants to create a truly innovative SHA-256 coin. I will lay out the basic business plan here:

1. Buy unprofitable ASICs for pennies on the dollar.
2. Design and develop a ground breaking SHA-256 coin. Better than all ALTs existing and better than Bitcoin itself.
3. Hash power will be split between Bitcoin and this new better alternative by speculators and people that believe in this new coin being better than Bitcoin. The split in hash power will allow the overlay to make gen1 ASICs profitable because hashing power is split in between Bitcoin and this new alternative coin.
...

Also, it doesn't even have to be a new SHA256 ALT coin. Perhaps a lot of development is done to an existing one to where it is more valuable to the community. Huge market shifts (UP!) in the value of SHA256 ALT coins could dramatically change the profitability of SHA256 mining.

01BTC10's point still stands.

If a first gen ASIC is a money loser when mining BTC, it'll be a money loser on any alt-coin as well. Why? Because if it's NOT a big money loser, then everyone with 2nd Gen ASIC's will pile into that network as well, and push the difficulty up enormously, rendering your Gen-1 chip just as unprofitable to mine with.

Say for example the network reaches the point where running a first gen ASIC earns you negative 25 cents per month (lets's say it gets out 0.01 BTC, but electricity costs you $1.75, but a 2nd gen chip earns .3 BTC at an electricity cost of $0.30).  You "discover" that you can mine CoinX at a profit - the ASIC still costs $1.75 to run, but you earn enough of these new coins that when converted to BTC, you''re earning 0.03 BTC/month. This news will get around rapidly. So you'll have all these owners of 2nd gen chips paying $0.30 for electricity and earning 0.03 BTC per month per chip moving to this new coin. Because, remember, if it's profitable you with a 1st gen, then it's even more someone with a second gen chip, who could theoretically earn 0.09 BTC rather than 0.03 BTC.

So, A, the difficulty rate will skyrocket to the point that your returns will be either nonexistent or negative once again. Or B, the value of the new coin will drop to the point, again, that your 1st Gen ASIC will struggle to break even when compared agains a Gen 2would make.

I think the thing is, you're looking for what is commonly known as "free lunch". Yes, those specials occassionally come to light, but they last an incredibly short amount of time before the market learns about it and adjusts.

Basically, look at the dollar denominated output of a miner and coin. If a miner can mine $10 of bitcoin in a day, then that's basically the cap for any other SHA alt coin. Why? If the same hardware could generate $30 per day for the miners, then every miner would scramble to the new coin and BTC transactions would co unconfirmed for ages.

So, no. There really won't be a use for 1st generation mining equipment once it's reached the end of it's life. That's the whole thing about "Application specific", they're built ONLY to perform the exact calculations that Bitcoin requires. And that's I'm become more and more convinced that this whole thing is a folly. By "thing" I mean hardware mining. No matter how much hashing power gets thrown on the network, the network will always be extremely vultnerable to a dedicated attacker. And transactions will always take minutes and minutes to confirm (the other day, i had to wait almost an hour for a 4 BTC transaction to go through. AND i'd added 0.004 for the miners. But that's a different story.

All that we're doing with ASIC's is spending a LOT of money to stay in the same place. Or to get short term, incremental advantage over oner another. I said it in a different thread, but the failure here is us. None of us are thinking up any real business ideas for Bitcoin, we're all convinced that the easiest and grandest fortunes are to be gotten from mining. If that continues to be the case, we're not going to see the mass adoptions of BTC that we dream about, because why will people choose to convert to Bitcoin if the only purpose is to convert back to fiat when it's time to spend the money>

Enough money is being wasted lining the pockets of Friedcat, BFL, KNC Miner, Avalon and every other person that even whispers that they're thinking about creating a new ASIC. Don't throw even more down the drain trying to scoop up peoples otherwise worthless 1st gen devices when they start getting thrown in the dustheap.

I don't see it this way. I understand where you and 01BTC10 are coming from, and I understand the reasoning. However, there will be a large financial incentive for someone to create an innovative SHA256 ALT coin because of the large number of Bitcoin ASIC paperweights.

If something truly innovative were to come out that was SHA256, it could make these paperweights profitable again. Yes, I agree Gen1 will always be at a disadvantage to Gen2, but if half of the Bitcoin network switches over to this new innovative coin it will effectively half the Bitcoin difficulty. Making it 200% more profitable to mine than it was before the new coin came out.

These may not necessarily always be the paperweight people imagine they will be, even without a new SHA256 ALT coin. Another scenario... at current BTC value, it will be unprofitable to mine with a 110nm Avalon when the difficulty reached about 2 trillion. If one BTC were to equal $1000usd, it would become unprofitable around 10.6 trillion difficulty. If one BTC were to be worth $100,000, an Avalon would be unprofitable to run at 750 trillion difficulty.

Even though most people will think they are paperweights when they immediately become unprofitable in 2014, this is simply not the case, especially if you are a long term bull on Bitcoin. I would not be surprised to see a $10,000 to $100,000 price for Bitcoin sometime in the future. It will be profitable to run these machines at this value, but you have to be very patient and know it's a mega long term investment when buying them when they become unprofitable at today's Bitcoin value.

I think there will be money in high process node SHA256 ASICs one way or the other. It depends on how patient and/or risk prone you are IMO. I know you are going to say, if you are a longterm Bitcoin bull that you would just be better off buying Bitcoin, but that may not be the case due to many unforeseen factors. If a truly innovative SHA256 coin were to surface, it would change the mining game up quite a bit.

[Buffer Overflow]

Miners will shift their older obsolete ASICs over to PPcoin eventually, as this coin cannot be merge-mined.

I predicted all this months ago in a couple of posts. PPcoin difficulty has increased 4-5 fold since already. Sooner than I thought.

[digitalindustry]

My point is that if a coin is profitable to mine with gen1 ASIC then gen2 ASIC can merge mine it for no additional cost thus making it unprofitable for gen1. Not like Litecoin that can't be mined with SHA256 ASIC.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post.

I don't think I explained myself thoroughly in the OP.

When gen1 ASICs become unprofitable, people will be looking for a way to make them profitable again. There will be a huge incentive for someone that wants to create a truly innovative SHA-256 coin. I will lay out the basic business plan here:

1. Buy unprofitable ASICs for pennies on the dollar.
2. Design and develop a ground breaking SHA-256 coin. Better than all ALTs existing and better than Bitcoin itself.
3. Hash power will be split between Bitcoin and this new better alternative by speculators and people that believe in this new coin being better than Bitcoin. The split in hash power will allow the overlay to make gen1 ASICs profitable because hashing power is split in between Bitcoin and this new alternative coin.

For instance, assuming a 66% monthly increase in difficulty, an Avalon will be unprofitable on May 14th when the network difficulty is 4863 million. If half the hash power switches to a new innovative SHA-256 coin, that would effectively bring Bitcoin difficulty down 50% to 2431.5 Million and you're back to making money again. Plus, maybe this new ALT coins is so much better than Bitcoin, that it is more valuable to mine than Bitcoin itself to due to high exchange prices from speculators. So, it could be a greater than 50% reduction in hash power in that case.

I have been right about a few things since I came on these forums and started posting. 1. Litecoin, 2. BFL being shady, I hope these won't be the last either. It is somewhat of a wild prediction, but I like throwing as many conspiracy theories out there and seeing which ones stick. Then I can bump this thread in a year and bump my chest if I'm right.   jk (or... not).

Also, it doesn't even have to be a new SHA256 ALT coin. Perhaps a lot of development is done to an existing one to where it is more valuable to the community. Huge market shifts (UP!) in the value of SHA256 ALT coins could dramatically change the profitability of SHA256 mining.

I said all this would happen before , and its started , what you are missing out of your equation is the depth of market .

There just isnt that many Gen1 ASICs dispersed into many hands out there compared to say GPU users , so the market never irrationally or rationally saw the  need to invent such an entity .

However now with the proliferation of ASICs of all types starting to spread , a market is developing .

However , what could occur is the proliferation of an SCrypt ASIC thus , furnishing the ASIC companies need to head towards an ROI and the proliferation of ASIC in that market .
If this was to  occur sha256 may be bypassed in this manner for the success that may be predicted .

But thats all uncertain .

[androsyn]

Miners will shift their older obsolete ASICs over to PPcoin eventually, as this coin cannot be merge-mined.

I predicted all this months ago in a couple of posts. PPcoin difficulty has increased 4-5 fold since already. Sooner than I thought.

look at this today..
TRC is scoring 270% more valuable than BTC, maybe for few hours a day

[markm]

Once the "compare profitability of different coins" sites start listing a coin lots of opportunists start hitting it.

But look what has been happening with I0Coin, GRouPcoin, CoiLedCoin and GeistGeld: because they were not listed, most miners did not bother to merged-mine them. Thus those who did merged-mine them were getting many more a day than they would once the masses caught on. This probably translates to those coins turning out to be a much larger bonus percent on one's mining income than the merged coins listed on the comparison sites, once they do end up on exchanges so that one can see their profitability and adjust it for the fact you were mining it at massively lower difficulty than will be in effect once the comparison sites do get around to listing them.

Bitparking's mmpool recently picked up I0Coin again, and also picked up GRouPcoin. The number of those coins one now mines per day with any given amount of hashing power is now massively less than it was before bitparking added them to its merge.

So the thing to have done was to mine them back when mmpool was not merging them. Currently one can still do that with CoiLedCoin and GeistGeld, though for how long remains uncertain.

I0Coin looks like it is worth a heck of a lot more now that it is on web-based exchanges than it was back when you had to use Open Transactions or over the counter methods to trade it.

It seems likely the same will happen to GRouPcoin once Vircurex adds it.

The more borderline the profitability of your hardware in mining the coins everyone and their dog mines, the more useful these ones that the masses have been ignoring all this time become. Though maybe having seen what has happened with I0Coin and GRouPcoin might make this under the radar approach work less well soon for CoiLedCoin and GeistGeld because now presumably more people are more aware of how nice a profit you can make by hoarding under-the-radar coins while they are sitting there at low difficulty almost-free to merged mine.

-MarkM-

[Professor James Moriarty]

 I don't think it is easy to catch up to litecoin usage or bitcoin anymore , they took off already , they can be used in variaty of places , I think there could be a great 3rd coin but the first two will stay same if you ask me.

[CoinHoarder]

Sorry to bump this old thread... I still hold this opinion and have been thinking about this more lately. If this is going to happen it will happen in the next 1-2 years.. maybe even less. I have recently decided if this prophesy were to come true, that Peer Coin will be the likely benefactor. I chose Peer Coin for similar reasons I chose Litecoin a year and a half ago.

1. Peer Coin has the 4th largest market cap of all cryptocoins- 3rd largest if you ignore the Ripple centralized premined scam coins. The way I figure this is that the more money that is available in a cryptocoin's economy, then they have more funds at their disposal to develop and promote their currency. Some people are really invested into Peer Coin by now, and I don't see it dying anytime soon. Also, someone is more likely to invest in a coin with a larger market cap than a smaller market cap. The coin with the largest market cap is perceived as being bigger or more popular- which it likely is.

2. Peer Coin was the original innovator of proof of stake, a technology that a lot of newer coins today are using and even entirely built on. I don't think anyone can argue that proof of stake minting wasn't innovative, and I feel like some credit is due for them developing PoS.

3. The reasons I've already described in this thread regarding gen1 Bitcoin ASICs.

4. Peer Coin has a solid developer, Sunny King is one of the best developers I have ever seen of an ALT coin. He is active within the community and I have even seen him fix other people's coins... just because he can.

I don't think it is easy to catch up to litecoin usage or bitcoin anymore , they took off already , they can be used in variaty of places , I think there could be a great 3rd coin but the first two will stay same if you ask me.

I agree it will be hard to catch up to them because of the network effect. I do still expect a SHA256 ALT to gain a lot of traction over the next couple years though.