Do you believe in cryptocurrency competition?

[ErisDiscordia]

patents are just a scheme which allows the turning of information into a commodity, which can be bought for money. And guess what? Our current monetary system needs an influx of more and more stuff you can buy for money, otherwise the built in monetary inflation of the system starts producing price inflation as well. What a scam!

[Crazy]

I don't think there's anything wrong with patents, I think a company should reap the benefits if they pour a lot of their resources into R&D. But patent trolling and generally any abuse of the system is very abhorrent behavior and should be reigned in.

[El Dude]

LTC is essentially a BTC fork with faster confirmations resulting in a less secure network. However, bitcoin payment processing companies can use off the block transactions for instant confirmations. I'm not saying LTC is useless. It just doesn't do anything bitcoin doesn't accept for send money slightly faster at the expense of security. But as the masses adopt, they will almost certainly be using simplified services that allow for off the block transactions.

I don't wish LTC would go away, I think it is and always will be a secondary to BTC. If anything, something like peercoin should prove to be more competition, as it is actually based on proof of stake AND proof of work, instead of just copying bitcoin and making a slight modification.

In the future an alt currency with real benefits over BTC could certainly be developed. Just hasn't happened yet.

false , Litecoin is more secure then bitcoin

http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/1cssqr/the_math_why_litecoin_is_more_secure_than_bitcoin/

[notme]

LTC is essentially a BTC fork with faster confirmations resulting in a less secure network. However, bitcoin payment processing companies can use off the block transactions for instant confirmations. I'm not saying LTC is useless. It just doesn't do anything bitcoin doesn't accept for send money slightly faster at the expense of security. But as the masses adopt, they will almost certainly be using simplified services that allow for off the block transactions.

I don't wish LTC would go away, I think it is and always will be a secondary to BTC. If anything, something like peercoin should prove to be more competition, as it is actually based on proof of stake AND proof of work, instead of just copying bitcoin and making a slight modification.

In the future an alt currency with real benefits over BTC could certainly be developed. Just hasn't happened yet.

false , Litecoin is more secure then bitcoin

http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/1cssqr/the_math_why_litecoin_is_more_secure_than_bitcoin/

He completely ignores that the cost for the hardware to get x% of the bitcoin network is about 10000x the cost the get x% of the litecoin mining.

[coraz]

false , Litecoin is more secure then bitcoin

First, there are magnitudes more computing power behind Bitcoin, which makes Bitcoin far, far more secure than any other cryptocurrency.

Second, even if the premises of that post is true and 2.5-minute confirmations are more secure than 10-minute ones, it would be much easier to change Bitcoin to 2.5-minute blocks (which is a relatively trivial change as long as the majority of miners agree) than to switch to Litecoin losing tens (probably hundreds) of million dollars invested into the Bitcoin network security.

[byronbb]

Litecoin going to continue to inflate versus btc. Already 2x more coins, and will grow at a nice steady clip. Also:
http://ltc.block-explorer.com/address/LTpYZG19YmfvY2bBDYtCKpunVRw7nVgRHW

[smoothie]

Litecoin and other alts provide an alternative to Fiat when "cashing out".

Instead of exchanging for government toilet paper you can trade it for say an undervalued alt coin.

[cbeast]

I'm expecting states to create local premined PoS cryptocurrencies as legal tender for the masses. Bitcoin will be exchanged for them as the World Reserve Currency on officially sanctioned exchanges. Colored coins will be issued by brokers for use by certified investors. There will be no purpose for any other PoW coins.

[pand70]

I don't think there's anything wrong with patents, I think a company should reap the benefits if they pour a lot of their resources into R&D. But patent trolling and generally any abuse of the system is very abhorrent behavior and should be reigned in.

Patents in some cases are dangerous like in the pharmaceutical businesses where companies don't initiate research if the potential outcome-drug don't qualifies as easy to be patented.

[sealberrder]

Maybe the future belongs to Litecoin, and Bitcoin will simply be remembered as  a beta test.

Not a chance. Bitcoin has its faults, but Litecoin doesn't improve on them in any significant way.

1. Energy costs. If anything, Litecoin's scrypt uses far more energy.
2. Scalable. Litecoin has faster blocks, thus greater overhead and less scalable.
3. Security. Scrypt is less widely used and analysed, thus SHA is likely more secure.
4. Anonymous. Litecoin's blockchain is just as susceptable to tracking.
5. Microtransactions. Litecoins tx are just as heavy.
6. Fast confirms. There's a need for 2 second confirmations, not 2.5 min. Litecoin isn't fast enough to be different.
etc.

Someday another cryptocurrency will play a key in complementing Bitcoin's faults, but it's not going to be Litecoin.

And yet despite all that it is rocketing.

Pure speculation from people believing fair LTC price is 25% of BTC 

[Boxman90]

LTC is essentially a BTC fork with faster confirmations resulting in a less secure network. However, bitcoin payment processing companies can use off the block transactions for instant confirmations. I'm not saying LTC is useless. It just doesn't do anything bitcoin doesn't accept for send money slightly faster at the expense of security. But as the masses adopt, they will almost certainly be using simplified services that allow for off the block transactions.

I don't wish LTC would go away, I think it is and always will be a secondary to BTC. If anything, something like peercoin should prove to be more competition, as it is actually based on proof of stake AND proof of work, instead of just copying bitcoin and making a slight modification.

In the future an alt currency with real benefits over BTC could certainly be developed. Just hasn't happened yet.

The main benefit over BTC would be the Scrypt hashing algorithm, for which mass production of ASIC's is less feasible, at least not by a factor of 1000 over GPU's like we're seeing on Bitcoin at the moment.

This means litecoin stays out of the hands of chinese chip monopolists, and into the hands of the well distributed userbase of graphics cards.

[tearfereon]

The main benefit over BTC would be the Scrypt hashing algorithm, for which mass production of ASIC's is less feasible, at least not by a factor of 1000 over GPU's like we're seeing on Bitcoin at the moment.

This means litecoin stays out of the hands of chinese chip monopolists, and into the hands of the well distributed userbase of graphics cards.

I dont believe in this. Even factor of 10 in effeciency over GPU will make graphics cards mining unprofitable. It is only matter of time

[KFR]

The main benefit over BTC would be the Scrypt hashing algorithm, for which mass production of ASIC's is less feasible, at least not by a factor of 1000 over GPU's like we're seeing on Bitcoin at the moment.

This means litecoin stays out of the hands of chinese chip monopolists, and into the hands of the well distributed userbase of graphics cards.

I dont believe in this. Even factor of 10 in effeciency over GPU will make graphics cards mining unprofitable. It is only matter of time

You don't have to "believe in it".  I would suggest it would be very unwise to dismiss it without further research however.

[coinpr0n]

Litecoin is fine, the problem is the other 25-hundred other useless alts. I think they are distracting and confusing newbies who would otherwise just accept the utility of Bitcoin - the original crypto-coin. I think that these new altcoins are too eager for market cap and not providing any new utility. Maybe after the crash of the mad rush, we will start to see some interesting innovations around the concept of crypto-currencies - I am dreaming of an blockchain-based traffic system or recycled mining yadda-yadda.

[pand70]

Litecoin is fine, the problem is the other 25-hundred other useless alts.

If you are on the alts thing then you can't just say litecoin is fine but others are not. You either believe that there must be only bitcoin or there isn't any logical limit to one or two more altcoins.

[theonewhowaskazu]

Litecoin is fine, the problem is the other 25-hundred other useless alts. I think they are distracting and confusing newbies who would otherwise just accept the utility of Bitcoin - the original crypto-coin. I think that these new altcoins are too eager for market cap and not providing any new utility. Maybe after the crash of the mad rush, we will start to see some interesting innovations around the concept of crypto-currencies - I am dreaming of an blockchain-based traffic system or recycled mining yadda-yadda.

Litecoin is just as bad if not worse than all the others. At least some of them actually tried to do something that might be considered an improvement over Bitcoin.

[Syke]

Second, even if the premises of that post is true and 2.5-minute confirmations are more secure than 10-minute ones, it would be much easier to change Bitcoin to 2.5-minute blocks (which is a relatively trivial change as long as the majority of miners agree) than to switch to Litecoin losing tens (probably hundreds) of million dollars invested into the Bitcoin network security.

Enormously flawed reasoning in that paper. Confirmations are confirmations. Read Satoshi's whitepaper. There is no time component to confirmation security. The paper incorrectly compares 6 bitcoin confirmations to 24 litecoin confirmations. An entirely invalid comparison.

[coinpr0n]

Litecoin is fine, the problem is the other 25-hundred other useless alts.

If you are on the alts thing then you can't just say litecoin is fine but others are not. You either believe that there must be only bitcoin or there isn't any logical limit to one or two more altcoins.

Ok. Perhaps Litecoin is not so fine. But it does seem to be 2nd most in demand. The problem I see is the too much choice which leads to confusion, and the fact that so many of these are obviously scams (I don't think that's the case with LTC).