This evening I was contacted by someone politely recommending that I take more interest in Litecoin, specifically for my company, Coinapult. I felt it'd be good to share my response to him with the community, because I think this continues to be a hot topic of discussion.
Hello [redacted],
Thanks for reaching out. Now, hopefully I don't come across as rude or elitist, but I need to be honest. Litecoin is not interesting to me. It offers no significant benefit over Bitcoin whatsoever. It has a little value purely as a backup blockchain in case some critical flaw destroys Bitcoin's blockchain (assuming the same flaw doesn't affect LTC). Other then that, why should anyone care about it? Don't tell me it has "faster confirmation times"... zero-conf Bitcoin transactions work for just about everything, and for those times when security is important, waiting for the 2.5 min LTC block is only 1/4th as secure, so the "advantage" is trivial. Does that justify a $350 million market cap? Consider me skeptical.
Understand that there is huge advantage - a massive technological and societal utility - in the current world moving toward Bitcoin. There is no advantage in a Bitcoin world moving toward Litecoin. I know Litecoin fans like to say it's silver to Bitcoin's gold, and while it's a cute comparison, it doesn't really mean anything. Bitcoin's divisibility eliminates the need for a less valuable unit to partner with. In other words, the mBTC is the silver to BTC's gold.
Here's my suspicion... the only reason you are suggesting to me that Coinapult (or any business) should accept Litecoin is that there's a chance the announcement of the acceptance will drive the LTC price higher. There's no significant added utility for the company, for me, or for you, beyond that speculative interest.
Litecoin, and the other alts, are 99.9999% speculation. To be sure, much of Bitcoin's price is also due to speculation about future value, but at least this is based on a reasonable assessment of the potential of the system vs. its competition (fiat currency and the global banking network). Speculating on altcoins, in general, is pure greater fool theory in action, because there is no significant fundamental utility, no "improvement delta" over Bitcoin itself. People are going to get burned with them, and it's unfortunate because Bitcoin is seeing returns of 10,000% per year and apparently that's just not enough for some people =)
Altcoins are the penny stocks of the Bitcoin world, and perhaps their greatest virtue is that they distract the most superficial speculators away from Bitcoin itself. Should they exist? Yes. I'm glad people experiment in every way with this technology. But don't let speculative experiments at the margin distract from the most mind-blowingly awesome monetary system mankind has ever seen - Bitcoin proper.
Cheers, -Erik
Ik deel de mening van Erik. Echter is het een goed ding dat er meerdere altcoins bestaan naast bitcoin.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rjv6l/my_response_to_a_litecoin_advocate/
