If Bitcoin is the Gold and Litecoin is the Silver then what will the Bronze be?

[zpply]

At this point alt coins out there appears to be fighting for 3rd to 5th place in the virtual currency world. Since Bitcoin is getting hard and harder to mine wouldn't another SHA-256 coin start to gain momentum as users point all there hardware to an alternative?

[bcp19]

At this point alt coins out there appears to be fighting for 3rd to 5th place in the virtual currency world. Since Bitcoin is getting hard and harder to mine wouldn't another SHA-256 coin start to gain momentum as users point all there hardware to an alternative?

Most sha-256 coins are worthless compared to BTC and any significant hardware thrown at them would 51% the network so fast it's not funny.  Why mine something that is 2-15% of BTC's value for the same effort?

[mgio]

At this point alt coins out there appears to be fighting for 3rd to 5th place in the virtual currency world. Since Bitcoin is getting hard and harder to mine wouldn't another SHA-256 coin start to gain momentum as users point all there hardware to an alternative?

What's the point. Bitcoin is gold, silver, and bronze. Litecoin is pointless and will die pretty soon along with all the other alt coins.

Sure, other SHA-256 coins will be easier to mine but you forget one important fact: There has to be someone out there that wants to buy them or they with be worthless, no matter how many you mine.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Bitcoin is gold, silver, and bronze.

Something is either radically superior and replaces Bitcoin completely or it targets a niche where Bitcoin is less than optimal and coexists.  The silver to gold analogy is just wishful thinking.

[alp]

Bitcoin is gold, silver, and bronze.

Something is either radically superior and replaces Bitcoin completely or it targets a niche where Bitcoin is less than optimal and coexists.  The silver to gold analogy is just wishful thinking.

Dead on.  There is a possibility that something comes along and solves a particular problem better than Bitcoin, and Bitcoin cannot solve it without also making the vast majority use cases worse in the process, thus the niche can be served by the alt-coin.  namecoin seems like a good example of this, it has a niche case, and there's no reason to extend Bitcoin to service namecoin use cases.

[Nemo1024]

Zetacoin: fast confirmations (buy you bread and walk out of the store within seconds, and not half an hour if you paid with BTC) + inflationary (new coins a seeped into economy at a slow rate inducing spending and rewarding miners [network maintainers]).

[FreeTrade]

Bitcoin is gold, silver, and bronze.

Something is either radically superior and replaces Bitcoin completely or it targets a niche where Bitcoin is less than optimal and coexists.  The silver to gold analogy is just wishful thinking.

Dead on.  There is a possibility that something comes along and solves a particular problem better than Bitcoin, and Bitcoin cannot solve it without also making the vast majority use cases worse in the process, thus the niche can be served by the alt-coin.  namecoin seems like a good example of this, it has a niche case, and there's no reason to extend Bitcoin to service namecoin use cases.

Another +1

The question is will there be a Platinum to Bitcoin's Gold.

[markm]

A lot of altcoins claimed that really fast blocks was a major important thing to have, if they were right then maybe GeistGeld will turn out to be the best fit for that niche since you get it "free" alongside your bitcoins and it has very fast blocks.

-MarkM-

[ronimacarroni]

Well anonymous transactions such as the ones that anoncoin will provide could come in handy in the future for services in which privacy is key.
Services such as cough... erm well... you know...

[gica_contra]

At this point alt coins out there appears to be fighting for 3rd to 5th place in the virtual currency world. Since Bitcoin is getting hard and harder to mine wouldn't another SHA-256 coin start to gain momentum as users point all there hardware to an alternative?

Most sha-256 coins are worthless compared to BTC and any significant hardware thrown at them would 51% the network so fast it's not funny.  Why mine something that is 2-15% of BTC's value for the same effort?

I don't think you know what a 51% attack is. It's a bit more complicated than that. Read up on it.

[FreeTrade]

A lot of altcoins claimed that really fast blocks was a major important thing to have,

You sound skeptical . . . I am too. I use this criterion as a filter.

[FreeTrade]

you forget one important fact: There has to be someone out there that wants to buy them or they with be worthless, no matter how many you mine.

This truly is an important fact.

The idea that 'lots of miners = successful coin' is cargo cult thinking. You need to focus on creating demand for a new coin. Miners follow the demand.

A successful coin has a lot of miners because it has a lot of demand, not the other way around.

[heatgsm]

Gold = Gold / Silver = Silver ... Not Bitcoin nor Litecoin will replace those two elements ever !

[miffman]

CGB

[ronimacarroni]

Gold = Gold / Silver = Silver ... Not Bitcoin nor Litecoin will replace those two elements ever !

well bitcoins is already worth more than silver.
Its only a matter of time before each bitcoin is worth more than 1 oz of gold.

[masterOfDisaster]

To take Bitcoin as Gold and Litecoin as Silver, I suggest Bronze to be given to PPCoin, Novacoin or Primecoin.
Litecoin is interesting, because it is one alternate coin which has (currently) a viable market capitalization that might be related to the supplemented hash function. Currently Litecoin offers something that Bitcoin doesn't. That might explain why it is at the moment one of the financial significant altcoins.

PPCoin, Novacoin and Primecoin bring something completely new to the concept of crypto coins.
Whereas PPCoin and Novacoin do this by introducing a Proof-of-Stake mechanism in addition to the well-known Proof-of-Work concept, Primecoin introduced a brand new Proof-of-Work idea.
So currently, if Bitcoin is taken Gold, Litecoin can be taken Silver and one of the 3 aforementioned altcoins can be taken Bronze.

But I doubt that this kind of ranking will ever be static. Due to the fact that there has a lot of money been invested in Bitcoin mining hardware, I assume that Bitcoin will remain economically important. Bitcoin is old enough to have proven being soundly designed and implemented. And the incredible amount of ASIC miners let me doubt it will ever be easy to mine Bitcoins. So if you want to own Bitcoins but can't mine them on your own, you have to go to an exchange and pay for them.

But regarding Silver and Bronze status I think it will take some more time to find out who will take this place - and even if the place is taken, no one can say that it will be taken forever

Just my 2 cents...

[joeperry]

Feathercoin maybe, worldcoin maybe, mincoin maybe,  at this point is hard to tell what could happen even next year.

When BT reach 1K $, and transacctions will have to use 0.0001 BT alt coin will have his opportunity, the first one in such race is litecoin, but I think there is room for some more.

[usahero]

It would be xpm, if it had decent gpu miner and btc-e support. But it doesn't, so it is too good for botnet operators atm.

[Carra23]

XPM or PPC or any other future Sunnyking coin. That guy keeps coming up with nice innovations.