Why the loss of confidence in litecoin?

[adamas]

Its going to hit $10 in no time......

It will hit that without Gox if bitcoin keeps making progress.

+1 The inevitable occurs  

[Morbid]

And a marketplace in which to spend them.

that isnt crucial. bitcoin didnt need places of spendature (excluding sr) to rise into triple digits. i personally beleive that we have big chunk of bitcoin users just buying it as a backup to their wealth as well as long term storage. knowing that such market attracts these people means that bitcoin will only rise. the ones who are into bitcoin for speculation purposes only are very fractional group imho. litecoin can be a wealth storage for poorer folks in the future just as working class mostly stack on silver and richer folk stack on gold.

[Lohoris]

Oh, I am sorry. Well, my point is litecoin is only 4 times 'worse' than bitcoin (max coin cap)

You are comparing apple to oranges.

So if I create a shitcoin with a coin cap of "1" it is automatically better? Or automatically worse?

Makes exactly ZERO sense.
As usual, with litecoin fans.

[El Dude]

the litecoin potential is still there after all its the 2nd biggest coin with a market cap of almost 100 million

see this post for a list of reason , why Litecoin will succeed https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=314238.msg3590060#msg3590060

[Sythyn]

Lets just wait for litecoin to go up, it has the potential to reach 4times cheaper then Bitcoin...

[Morbid]

Lets just wait for litecoin to go up, it has the potential to reach 4times cheaper then Bitcoin...

you also need to take into account other alts. i'd give it 1/20 at its best.

[cdog]

Mt Gox is definitely hurting all of crypto because people have money tied up on there and cant get it out.

Gox wont update to Midas until they have their banking issues fixed, and thats proven incredibly hard as no banks want their business.

So Gox is stuck paying out at a trickle and is losing tons of market share every day, so the importance of Gox to LTC dropped dramatically.

Given all this, the fact that LTC is back over $4 and holding steady at .01 BTC is proof positive that this coin is here to stay and has major support.

LTC has a big, bright future which has only just begun. We need to ask merchants and vendors to accept LTC as soon as possible.

[Flashman]

and holding steady at .01 BTC

Well thanks for jinxing it. :p

[User705]

And a marketplace in which to spend them.

that isnt crucial. bitcoin didnt need places of spendature (excluding sr) to rise into triple digits. i personally beleive that we have big chunk of bitcoin users just buying it as a backup to their wealth as well as long term storage. knowing that such market attracts these people means that bitcoin will only rise. the ones who are into bitcoin for speculation purposes only are very fractional group imho. litecoin can be a wealth storage for poorer folks in the future just as working class mostly stack on silver and richer folk stack on gold.

Not to discount anything else but that makes little sense.  The reason wealthier people hold gold vs silver is that it is more portable in larger volumes.  Litecoin and bitcoin take up the same amount of space.

[hozer]

Cryptocoins have value because people use them for transactions.

Bitcoin has lower transaction cost than Litecoin (no fee transactions seem to take a day)

Litecoin's default transaction fee is 0.1, which feels to me like significantly higher cost than credit cards, checks, cash, bitcoin, or Dwolla. Why the heck would I want to use litecoin to transfer a lot of money around when I can use bitcoin?

Now make it 0.0001 and watch the market cap of litecoin skyrocket. I'm half tempted to start a mining pool and/or fork the code and do that.

Maybe there's an argument here that the high transaction fee is necessary to make it economical to mine based on transaction fees and not the block reward, but I don't see that one being made much.

[Tomatocage]

Sorry, I haven't been keeping up with the Kardashians. What loss in confidence are you referring to?

[laowai80]

Oh, I am sorry. Well, my point is litecoin is only 4 times 'worse' than bitcoin (max coin cap)

You are comparing apple to oranges.

So if I create a shitcoin with a coin cap of "1" it is automatically better? Or automatically worse?

Makes exactly ZERO sense.
As usual, with litecoin fans.

As usual, with bitcoin fans, they can't see nothing but bitcoin, missing out on other opportunities
For the record, I am no fan of any crypto-currency. I look into their pros and cons before I buy. No emotional attachment to any investment is a good way of managing it properly.

[laowai80]

Cryptocoins have value because people use them for transactions.

Bitcoin has lower transaction cost than Litecoin (no fee transactions seem to take a day)

Litecoin's default transaction fee is 0.1, which feels to me like significantly higher cost than credit cards, checks, cash, bitcoin, or Dwolla. Why the heck would I want to use litecoin to transfer a lot of money around when I can use bitcoin?

Now make it 0.0001 and watch the market cap of litecoin skyrocket. I'm half tempted to start a mining pool and/or fork the code and do that.

Maybe there's an argument here that the high transaction fee is necessary to make it economical to mine based on transaction fees and not the block reward, but I don't see that one being made much.

Litecoin transaction fee is not 0.1, it is 0.02 ($0.16 at current price).
The devs suggested to reduce the fee to 0.01 ($0.08 at current price) a few days ago, users voting on this at the moment and it'll likely pass.

Recently BTC transaction fee that guarantees normal confirmation time has been around 0.0005, which is roughly $0.30 at current price. So, litecoin fee is already lower than the practical BTC fee.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Recently BTC transaction fee that guarantees normal confirmation time has been around 0.0005, which is roughly $0.30 at current price. So, litecoin fee is already lower than the practical BTC fee.

Nonsense.  Take a look at a recent block count the number of tx which pay 0.5 mBTC per kB.  While there might be one or two out of hundreds of thousands of txs it is utter fud to say 0.5mBTC is needed.    The min fee of 0.1mBTC is sufficient.  Tx which don't confirm usually have other issues (like having dust outputs, unconfirmed inputs, no fee, fee below the 0.1mBTC threshold, etc).

As an example here is a recent large block.  It was mined by Eligus which does not include any free tx.  It is 608kB and contains 677 transactions
https://blockchain.info/block-index/441261/00000000000000036af9c03ac779286f3f8ce922b9aa1f8c2c51909c1d89cc67

~2% of tx contain a fee of less than 0.1 mBTC per kB
~82% of tx contain a fee between 0.1 mBTC and 0.11 mBTC per kB
~2% of tx contain a fee between 0.12 and 0.19 mBTC per kB
~5% of tx contain a fee between 0.2 and 0.49 mBTC per kB
~0% of tx contain a fee of 0.5 mBTC per kB or more  (there are 3 of the 677 tx)
may not add up to 100% due to rounding.



Bitcoin is ill suited for micro transactions and it is still cheaper (~$0.05 per kB) than LTC now (~$0.16 per kB) and after the fee reduction (~$0.08 per kB)

[laowai80]

Recently BTC transaction fee that guarantees normal confirmation time has been around 0.0005, which is roughly $0.30 at current price. So, litecoin fee is already lower than the practical BTC fee.

Nonsense.  Take a look at a recent block count the number of tx which pay 0.5 mBTC per kB.  While there might be one or two out of hundreds of thousands of txs it is utter fud to say 0.5mBTC is needed.    The min fee of 0.1mBTC is sufficient.  Tx which don't confirm usually have other issues (like having dust outputs, unconfirmed inputs, no fee, fee below the 0.1mBTC threshold, etc).


Bitcoin is ill suited for micro transactions and it is still cheaper (~$0.05 per kB) than LTC now (~$0.16 per kB) and after the fee reduction (~$0.08 per kB)

I admit, I haven't tried to send BTC with a 0.0001 fee recently, just read the forum threads that people had issues with slow confirmations. All my recent 0.0005 fee transactions were fast. But in the future things could and would change quickly as the number of transactions grows, the fee has to be raised to make it to the top of the list. So my expectations for the next 1-2 years are that LTC will take the niche of micro-payments, whereas BTC will grow into a more heavy-weight category.

[DeathAndTaxes]

But in the future things could and would change quickly as the number of transactions grows, the fee has to be raised to make it to the top of the list. So my expectations for the next 1-2 years are that LTC will take the niche of micro-payments, whereas BTC will grow into a more heavy-weight category.

Why would LTC take the niche of micro-payments? The EXACT same economics of orphan rates vs block size apply to LTC.  It would be any lower cost for miners to make large LTC blocks as they do for BTC blocks.

In theory one could design a micro tx with the stated goal of having a low processing cost and designed around micro transactions.  Nobody has done it, but it could be done.  LTC is no better suited for micro transactions than BTC is.

[laowai80]

Why would LTC take the niche of micro-payments? The EXACT same economics of orphan rates vs block size apply to LTC.  It would be any lower cost for miners to make large LTC blocks as they do for BTC blocks.

In theory one could design a micro tx with the stated goal of having a low processing cost and designed around micro transactions.  Nobody has done it, but it could be done.  LTC is no better suited for micro transactions than BTC is.

How many thousands of transactions per second in the world do credit card companies process? BTC has serious limitations in this regard, so as it gains more user base, it'll have to stick to large transactions only or it becomes unuseable, too expensive, etc.

Network effect will hit BTC first, LTC will take over the micro-payments niche and be able to process them more efficiently for a while, then network effect will hit LTC, some other alt-coin will take its niche, then some other alt-coin, and so on. That's my vision of it for the next couple of years, given current tendencies, can't predict longer than that, this industry is too dynamic, anything could happen.

[DeathAndTaxes]

You kinda just imagined up a non answer to fit your always stated conclusion.

It has to stick to large tx or it will become to unuseable?  too expensive?

Why would including smaller tx make it unuseable?  Why would incuding more transaction and thus having a lower cost per tx make it more expensive?

[laowai80]

Why would including smaller tx make it unuseable?  Why would incuding more transaction and thus having a lower cost per tx make it more expensive?

Why is it starting to happen now? Greed? Miners want higher fees. Human nature. Imagine miners have to process 10x, 100x, 1000x more transactions than now? How would they handle it? Of course, they'd first service the transactions with the highest tx fee. I mean, come one, it's just common sense logic. Low fee transactions would have to wait indefinite time in that case. So people would switch to a coin that still has adequate transaction time, more than one coin has a chance to compete, LTC is just the natural first candidate, but there are others waiting for their turn to dance.

[DeathAndTaxes]

And the LTC miners won't be greedy?

It actually isn't greed on the part of BTC miners.  The orphan cost for a BTC miner is 3.3 mBTC per kB of block size.  Most tx pay less than that.  Miners are reluctant to make significantly larger blocks because it means they actually lose money.  If you get 0.1 mBTC per kB of block size and lose 3.3 mBTC per kB of block size due to increased orphans it doesn't make much sense to increase the block size.

LTC has the exact same economics.  It just so happens right now it is used for absolutely nothing and thus blocks have a negligible amount of txs.   If its tx volume grew it would be looking at the exact same outcome.