Can Litecoin hold the #2 spot? Doubtful..and here are the coins who will benefit

[coblee]

TheMage pointed me to this thread. I figure I should correct some facts.

Yes, it was my brother, Bobby, who claimed the most of the Chinese exchanges are faking their volume. Given the depth of the order books, it's very likely that this is the case. But this affects both Bitcoin and Litecoin. It may be true that it affects Litecoin more than Bitcoin as OKCoin's LTC volume is ridiculously high. And it looks like coinmarketcap.com's volume does not include OKCoin: http://coinmarketcap.com/volume.html#ltc

The reason why Litecoin's launch is fair is because it was publicly announced AND binary/source publicly distributed days before the launch. At launch time, almost everyone that cared about alt currency at that time was ready to mine litecoins the second I released the config params for the genesis block. So maybe Litecoin has a small instamine, but those instamined coins were distributed as fairly as possible at the time. Sadly, NONE of the copycat altcoins that came after Litecoin copied this critical feature of Litecoin. Most of these newer coins were launched to a small community or just the devs and were instamined by that small group. Others we premined.

And people like to spread FUD about the fact that someone was GPU mining litecoins at the start. A while ago, I did a difficulty analysis of the Litecoin start and showed that it was extremely unlikely that someone was GPU mining. The hashrate and subsequent increase matches the thousands of CPUs that were mining Litecoin at that time. If someone can find that thread, please post it here. I've said this many times, and I will state it again. I did not GPU mine Litecoin at the start and for that matter, I have NEVER GPU mined Litecoin at all. I did have 8 GPUs back then and was mining Bitcoin with it until I retired them early last year. Actually, if you want proof, you can ask Roger Ver. He was hosting my GPUs at his memorydealers warehouse. And I had them set up to mine bitcoins and left them there mining bitcoins and never touched them until 2013. And I don't have any vested interest in ASIC hardware. The reason for not switching PoW algorithm is because the risk of hard fork.

The reason why I chose Scrypt for Litecoin is more so because Litecoin needed to be mined by a different class of hardware than Bitcoin than it is because it was ASIC-resistant. I never believed Scrypt was ASIC-proof. The ASIC-resistancy was important though and it helped delay ASICs for as long as possible. The reason why that was important was because you need the coin's early miners to be as decentralized as possible. Why? Because in the beginning, the miners are the users. These will be the people that support the coin and help spread it. If the coin started with only 100 people able to mine it, then it won't go anywhere. As the coin matures (like Bitcoin and now Litecoin), the user base is no longer the same as the miner base. And having a more centralized miner base is not a big problem. Security of the coin is determined by how much money is spent protecting it. And ASICs helps with security because it makes it easy for people to pour a lot of money into mining hardware. But remember, centralization of miners does not mean the coin is centralized. The user base of the coin is still decentralized. If the miners decide to make a change in the software that people don't like, the majority of the user can choose to not accept the new version. Sure, with 51%, a miner can double spend his own transactions, reject other blocks, or do transaction withholding attacks, but it would be financial suicide to do that. So this is why I welcome Scrypt ASICs. I think the value of the security it brings outweighs the mining centralization that comes with ASICs.

So why is Litecoin valuable today? Here's what I think justifies Litecoin's maketcap and why it will stay #2 behind Bitcoin for the foreseeable future:

• Litecoin's trade volume dwarfs most other coins.
• Litecoin is supported by a huge number of exchanges. No other altcoin comes close.
• Like the comparison or not, Litecoin is silver to Bitcoin's gold. Having a cryptocurrency trading pair is important for arbitrage reasons. Litecoin is playing that role today. It's hard for another coin to take over that role.
• Litecoin is supported by payment processors like GoCoin and, if I can help it, Coinbase. Payment processors are critical in the path towards mass adoption.
• Litecoin is accepted by a huge amount of merchants. Look at http://coinmap.org/
• Litecoin has ATM support.
• Litecoin is protected by its own network of hardware dedicated to Scrypt mine. And Litecoin's hashrate dwarfs that of other Scrypt coins. The amount of money spent protecting Litecoin will increase substantially with Scrypt ASICs.
• Litecoin runs on well tested codebase. Because it is basically Bitcoin with a few changes.
• We have a great dev team and an awesome Litecoin association.

Some of the altcoins come close with respect to some of these points: nxt (devs, hardware), dark (trade volume), doge (merchant processor, atm, devs)
But no other coin really comes close to having all of these features.

And of course, Bitcoin is by far ahead of Litecoin. I never expected Litecoin to overtake Bitcoin. I always envisioned it as be used side by side with Bitcoin just like silver and gold. As we are already seeing, Bitcoin will not be able to handle all the transactions required for a global payment system. This is where I see alt currencies can help. You need other cryptocurrencies protected by different hardware networks to help with the transaction load. Naturally (because of the price of Bitcoin), the more expensive transactions will be on the Bitcoin network. It's more secure but it also has a higher fee. This will push cheaper transactions to other networks. I think there will be 3 currencies that will be used for 3 types of transactions: buying expensive things like houses/cars, buying gifts/meals/drinks, and microtransactions/tipping. And today, these 3 currencies will be Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin.

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[Rofo]

LTCs biggest feature is its constantly expanding security and the fact it is embedding itself into the mainstream systems that currently support only BTC. The security alone is what makes it more valuable, as well as it standing the test of time & having proven developers with a good head and ability to stand on their own two feet.

It doesn't need to cater to the miners and day-traders of the bitcointalk altcoin forum (a bit blunt but no offence). It's past that and reaching into professional & mainstream service adoption.

Edit: Coblee posted as I typed this, subdue any attempt at fanboism..

[smoothie]

LTCs biggest feature is its constantly expanding security and the fact it is embedding itself into the mainstream systems that currently support only BTC. The security alone is what makes it more valuable, as well as it standing the test of time & having proven developers with a good head and ability to stand on their own two feet.

It doesn't need to cater to the miners and day-traders of the bitcointalk altcoin forum (a bit blunt but no offence). It's past that and reaching into professional & mainstream service adoption.

Edit: Coblee posted as I typed this, subdue any attempt at fanboism..

Bolded says it all when it comes to justification of price/security/acceptance.

Just because a coin doesn't have a "feature" you want or think it should have, does not mean that the coin's value will change based solely on your single opinion. Many seem to think that just because a feature doesn't exist that it should not be considered a trustworthy useable currency.

[Rofo]

I hope that was not taken to represent LTC however, that's just my personal opinion. LTC & Coblee have proven themselves (especially with the offer to DOGE to merge-mine) that they are not just in it for themselves and approach cryptocurrency from a broader, more positive, philosophical and multi-coin position than most.

[devphp]

Many seem to think that just because a feature doesn't exist that it should not be considered a trustworthy useable currency.

Nah, that's not the point. The point is, it may be trustworthy and useable, but each additional feature gives another one a competitive advantage, opens new markets and adds to the utility value.

[Rofo]

Many seem to think that just because a feature doesn't exist that it should not be considered a trustworthy useable currency.

Nah, that's not the point. The point is, it may be trustworthy and useable, but each additional feature gives another one a competitive advantage, opens new markets and adds to the utility value.

Many features demanded of a coin like LTC however also require a hard fork, and that is very risky business for a coin of that age, size and adoption. It's easy for many of the altcoins in this area because there is little to lose in comparison.

[devphp]

Many features demanded of a coin like LTC however also require a hard fork, and that is very risky risk business for a coin of that age, size and adoption. It's easy for many of the altcoins in this area because there is little to lose in comparison.

True. That's why it's stagnating and losing in marketcap. Only cosmetic development, no new features added.

[Spoetnik]

I've been on this forum for a while and I've never shilled for any coin.  I've been enthusiastic about some coins(NXT for instance).  LTC was mostly irrelevant to me but I think it's end is near for obvious reasons.  Investors should know this.

-bm

Rather than feed your trolling, here are some links for people to read about Litecoin and make their own minds up.

Dear Litecoin Community,

You may have seen recently I made a post titled “Litecoin State of the Union”, which was made in order to clarify what was going on in the world of Litecoin, and calm peoples fear...

that message greatly calmed my fears about LTC.  It seems as though LTC is as good as Bitcoin.  Actually it's seems like it's exactly the same thing as Bitcoin except it's no where near as popular.

</sarcasm>

-bm

How long does BTC take to get confirmations. I often wait 10 minutes when doing a face to face buy. With LTC it takes a couple of minutes maximum.

Try using LTC and you will see why people like it.

NXT is even faster.

and Jackpotcoin is EVEN faster

[From Above]

I've been on this forum for a while and I've never shilled for any coin.  I've been enthusiastic about some coins(NXT for instance).  LTC was mostly irrelevant to me but I think it's end is near for obvious reasons.  Investors should know this.

-bm

Rather than feed your trolling, here are some links for people to read about Litecoin and make their own minds up.

Dear Litecoin Community,

You may have seen recently I made a post titled “Litecoin State of the Union”, which was made in order to clarify what was going on in the world of Litecoin, and calm peoples fear...

that message greatly calmed my fears about LTC.  It seems as though LTC is as good as Bitcoin.  Actually it's seems like it's exactly the same thing as Bitcoin except it's no where near as popular.

</sarcasm>

-bm

How long does BTC take to get confirmations. I often wait 10 minutes when doing a face to face buy. With LTC it takes a couple of minutes maximum.

Try using LTC and you will see why people like it.

NXT is even faster.

and Jackpotcoin is EVEN faster

lol

[devphp]

Since coblee is here, why not do what Counterparty did and clone it to make it run on top of Litecoin? Just one suggestion to make Litecoin more useful. That would at least show the developers care about Litecoin and add something new. Especially since Counterparty code is already there to copy with slight modifications.

[Amph]

ltc is bad nothing is good from it, just a clone, darkcoin is holding strong despite all the hate and the instamine, for vertcoin i'm on the fence, can stay there like it can go to darkcoin position

i predict new coins with new feature will dominate, the current coins lineup isnt that good, one thing i really hate is the big farm, a coin should implement a limit to make it not centralized like bitcoin mining.

bitcoin with hash limit would be a dream

[From Above]

Since coblee is here, why not do what Counterparty did and clone it to make it run on top of Litecoin? Just one suggestion to make Litecoin more useful. That would at least show the developers care about Litecoin and add something new. Especially since Counterparty code is already there to copy with slight modifications.

U can't save Litecoin dude ^^

[smoothie]

Many seem to think that just because a feature doesn't exist that it should not be considered a trustworthy useable currency.

Nah, that's not the point. The point is, it may be trustworthy and useable, but each additional feature gives another one a competitive advantage, opens new markets and adds to the utility value.

Once again we are talking about your opinion.

The market's opinion overall matters more. Just look at the track record of LTC thus far over almost 3 years.

Features come with cost as well as testing. Testing takes time and patience. It isn't where you stick it in the microwave and voila it is done.

[From Above]

Many seem to think that just because a feature doesn't exist that it should not be considered a trustworthy useable currency.

Nah, that's not the point. The point is, it may be trustworthy and useable, but each additional feature gives another one a competitive advantage, opens new markets and adds to the utility value.

Once again we are talking about your opinion.

The market's opinion overall matters more. Just look at the track record of LTC thus far over almost 3 years.

Features come with cost as well as testing. Testing takes time and patience. It isn't where you stick it in the microwave and voila it is done.

Lol good comparison. Litecoin is like microwave. What a shit xD

[smoothie]

Many features demanded of a coin like LTC however also require a hard fork, and that is very risky risk business for a coin of that age, size and adoption. It's easy for many of the altcoins in this area because there is little to lose in comparison.

True. That's why it's stagnating and losing in marketcap. Only cosmetic development, no new features added.

Try to follow the magnitude of how difficult it is to hard fork a coin as old as LTC is and get its entire userbase to accept the changes.

Good luck with that. So far all I see is someone talking but not realizing the cost of what those changes would require.

[smoothie]

Many seem to think that just because a feature doesn't exist that it should not be considered a trustworthy useable currency.

Nah, that's not the point. The point is, it may be trustworthy and useable, but each additional feature gives another one a competitive advantage, opens new markets and adds to the utility value.

Once again we are talking about your opinion.

The market's opinion overall matters more. Just look at the track record of LTC thus far over almost 3 years.

Features come with cost as well as testing. Testing takes time and patience. It isn't where you stick it in the microwave and voila it is done.

Lol good comparison. Litecoin is like microwave. What a shit xD

lol where did I say LTC was like a mircowave? Oh right you must have pulled that out of your back end. 

[From Above]

Many seem to think that just because a feature doesn't exist that it should not be considered a trustworthy useable currency.

Nah, that's not the point. The point is, it may be trustworthy and useable, but each additional feature gives another one a competitive advantage, opens new markets and adds to the utility value.

Once again we are talking about your opinion.

The market's opinion overall matters more. Just look at the track record of LTC thus far over almost 3 years.

Features come with cost as well as testing. Testing takes time and patience. It isn't where you stick it in the microwave and voila it is done.

Lol good comparison. Litecoin is like microwave. What a shit xD

lol where did I say LTC was like a mircowave? Oh right you must have pulled that out of your back end. 

Lol xD!  Litecoin is not even microwave right?^^

[devphp]

Once again we are talking about your opinion.

The market's opinion overall matters more. Just look at the track record of LTC thus far over almost 3 years.

Features come with cost as well as testing. Testing takes time and patience. It isn't where you stick it in the microwave and voila it is done.

You come as a smart one and must understand that in technology you can't rely on the past success, you have to work hard all the time. Above I made one suggestion which doesn't require much testing, as Counterparty did a lion's share of the work already, but would add to utility of Litecoin a lot. Although I think at this point it wouldn't gain a lot of market share, but it'd add a new feature and wouldn't require a hard fork, and help Litecoin survive longer. Just sitting and waiting won't move it anywhere, but downwards.

[smoothie]

Many seem to think that just because a feature doesn't exist that it should not be considered a trustworthy useable currency.

Nah, that's not the point. The point is, it may be trustworthy and useable, but each additional feature gives another one a competitive advantage, opens new markets and adds to the utility value.

Once again we are talking about your opinion.

The market's opinion overall matters more. Just look at the track record of LTC thus far over almost 3 years.

Features come with cost as well as testing. Testing takes time and patience. It isn't where you stick it in the microwave and voila it is done.

Lol good comparison. Litecoin is like microwave. What a shit xD

lol where did I say LTC was like a mircowave? Oh right you must have pulled that out of your back end. 

Lol xD!  Litecoin is not even microwave right?^^

Translation: "I can typing!"  

[From Above]

U seem to have significant Holdings in the sunken microwave Litecoin.

My friend please watch out before u fall hard