Will Litecoin Prosper?

[Garr255]

There has yet to be a Bitcoin derivative that has come close to being half the price of a Bitcoin. I just one other peoples' opinions on the matter. I think it could help the crypto-economy if we had multiple currencies once the user base is large enough, but might also hinder it. If people choose one currency over the other this creates competition. Competition could go either way, raising or lowering the value of the coin. I just spent a few Bitcoins on a new CPU cooler to Litecoin mine with, and I've made about $0.80 mining with 30kh/s for a day or two. Maybe this is like Bitcoin, where the price skyrockets after it is publicized, making early adopters and on time sellers rich.

Opinions?

[shakti]

There has yet to be a Bitcoin derivative that has come close to being half the price of a Bitcoin. I just one other peoples' opinions on the matter. I think it could help the crypto-economy if we had multiple currencies once the user base is large enough, but might also hinder it. If people choose one currency over the other this creates competition. Competition could go either way, raising or lowering the value of the coin. I just spent a few Bitcoins on a new CPU cooler to Litecoin mine with, and I've made about $0.80 mining with 30kh/s for a day or two. Maybe this is like Bitcoin, where the price skyrockets after it is publicized, making early adopters and on time sellers rich.

Opinions?

Do you mean 0.08$ ? or did you got ~150 litecoins for 1-2 days with 30kh/s ?

[Garr255]

I have 80, and the price on btc-e yesterday was about $0.01/ltc

[drakahn]

I am sure enough in a few years LTC will be be worth a very stable 0.025BTC, if a few things happen

1) all things under 0.25BTC are traded for litecoins instead
2) CPU mining remains the best way to mine LTC
3) The current speed of acceptance keeps up
4) more people mine, the generation rate is too high for the amount of miners we have, a lot of slow-medium speed miners would be a good thing.

[markm]

I am thinking that LiTeCoin could maybe benefit from an FPGA mining farm that mines all the merged-mining GPU coins and uses all of them to buy Litecoins. Basically the same thing I want to do for DeVCoin except that LiTeCoin won't be one of the coins mined, unlike with DeVCoin, which itself can be GPU mined with merged mining.

The idea basically is to create things that will buy the coins, thus presumably helping to keep them sellable and maybe / hopefully even increase the price they sell for.

I'd do it the same way: have a "corp", LiTeCorp, just like DeVCorp but with the objective of promoting the value of LiTeCoin instead of DeVCoin. Preobably pretty much any approach DeVCorp comes up with for increasing the value of DeVCoins, LiTeCorp can probably apply toward improving the value of LiteCoins.

Millions of DeVCoins have already been committed to DeVCorp and other DeVCoin-oriented "corps", but the people putting in those coins mostly do not have any LiTeCoins at all so I have no idea whether LiTeCoiners would be as interested in such approaches as the DeVCoin holders have shown themselves to be.

I have created an asset contract for my Open Transactions server to support the trading of LiTeCoins, but didn't create a LiTeCorp shares/stocks contract yet mostly due to no actual LiTeCoins having been put into the system yet, unlike DeVCoin of which well over a hundred million is already in the system.

-MarkM-

[Kluge]

I tried LTC mining a couple weeks ago. Mining was unprofitable (on top of the heat, effort, and not including wear on components - but fwiw, I was just using the cheap CPUs which run my Bitcoin miners), there was nothing I could buy (put my earnings in the one lonely lotto raffle), and I'm still not sure of why I'd want to use it over BTC even if the first two issues were fixed (particularly because even though LTC blocks are solved faster, websites seem to require more confirmations before they consider it valid). BTC was fairly unique and has a clear role as an innovative medium of exchange and has been relatively well-adopted - LTC is a spin-off competing for the same role without the benefits of being first.

I could see something like Namecoin working out as it uses the Bitcoin ideas and puts them toward something other than just facilitating exchange -- its inherent value is not only from its advantages as a medium of exchange. AFAIK, that's not the case with LTC.

[memvola]

Why Litecoin though? Bitcoin has so many obstacles on its path that it makes me think alternative currencies attempting to solve single issues do not contribute to the crypto-currency concept that much (they do contribute to research and development though). If it's an essential feature, it would and should be embedded into Bitcoin, otherwise there would be an inflation of crypto-currencies that appeal to particular use cases. For instance, scalability is such an enormous issue that it renders all diversity in currently implemented alt-currencies insignificant.

[El Cabron]

I'm a bitcoin man but I do hold 25,000LTC

It will be interesting to see what happens.


I do think however in about 5 or 6 years there will be a better coin than BTC and slowly that will be adopted.

[markm]

Why Litecoin though? Bitcoin has so many obstacles on its path that it makes me think alternative currencies attempting to solve single issues do not contribute to the crypto-currency concept that much (they do contribute to research and development though). If it's an essential feature, it would and should be embedded into Bitcoin, otherwise there would be an inflation of crypto-currencies that appeal to particular use cases. For instance, scalability is such an enormous issue that it renders all diversity in currently implemented alt-currencies insignificant.

One essential feature that probably will NOT be a priority feature for Bitcoin is sheer official worthlessness, like baseball cards before they took off, like comics before *they* became collectors items, worthless game-tokens that game-players can have fun with and maybe, many years later, find are worth some silly amount of money possibly for quite silly reasons.

Bitcoins are more and more unsuitable for games the more they try to be "real money", because the more "real" the money the more "gambling" type fuss gets dragged in to spoil the game(s).

We *need* poker-chips that don't turn any and every game that finds some use for them into "gambling" merely on account of the chips happening have the word "poker" associated with them in some way.

-MarkM-

[tatsuchan]

I've been toying with the notion for a while about a system that pays people in points (backed by Litecoins) for website traffic/blog posts/facebook updates/twitter....etc.... The largest hurdle I think is educating people on what cryptocurrencies are, and than providing a safe/easy way for the average person to buy them like arcade tokens on a whim.  People know what tokens and points are, not bitcoins and litecoins.  So maybe set up a wallet exclusive to a website where they could cash litecoins in for some sort of prize (think warcraft mounts or second life clothing), or they could figure litecoins out a bit more with guidance and just withdraw them from their website pool.

Imagine having a currency worth a few pennies that you could tip EVERYWHERE with on Facebook too.  Millions of dollars would be tossed around daily.  Putting up little wishing wells to throw pennies in all around the internet has a lot of value.  I wouldn't throw a $10 dollar bill (bitcoin) in a wishing well, but I would a nickel.  The fact that it isn't money might separate it from certain laws and website guidelines (not really sure there). All we really need is a good facebook app (Or whatever site) and a push for wide acceptance. 

My point is Litecoin might be the wooden nickel/arcade token of the internet.  I've spent enough to buy 10,000 litecoins so far, and have been mining for over 3 months.  So I'm betting on it too.

[FlipPro]

It has no valid use.

So probably not...

It's essentially Bitcoin with less security.

[bitcoinsarefun]

It has no valid use.

So probably not...

It's essentially Bitcoin with less security.

well, I am accepting payments in litecoin for irc bounce accounts I will also be offering VPS & Shared Hosting services in the next few weeks.

So you can kinda use it for something ... 

[markm]

I have just set up yet another web-based game, http://fantasy.mygamesonline.org/ so check it out and figure out how many Litecoins you'd be willing to pay for whatever things you'd be interested in buying there...

-MarkM-

[drakahn]

2) CPU mining remains the best way to mine LTC

So I still think this applies, even with the GPU miner, using that means not mining BTC.

Even so, time for a new algorithm?

[tatsuchan]

It has no valid use.

So probably not...

It's essentially Bitcoin with less security.

There are plenty of uses for a currency to compliment Bitcoin. Just having an alternative to Bitcoin is reason enough to have Litecoin.  It is all new to everyone, and could have many possibilities that we haven't seen yet.  I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable with any of the other alternates out there.

[the joint]

It has no valid use.

So probably not...

It's essentially Bitcoin with less security.

There are plenty of uses for a currency to compliment Bitcoin. Just having an alternative to Bitcoin is reason enough to have Litecoin.  It is all new to everyone, and could have many possibilities that we haven't seen yet.  I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable with any of the other alternates out there.

Absolutely.  Litecoin touts itself as the silver to Bitcoin's gold, and when I mine them, it kind of feels that way.  I truly hope it DOES prosper and work in tandem with the Bitcoin economy.

[dayfall]

I think it could prosper if it was adopted by an indi game or some Facebook type service.  But what I think will happen will it will be either Bitcoin or else something not yet created that survives long term.

[tom10122]

I am sure enough in a few years LTC will be be worth a very stable 0.025BTC, if a few things happen

1) all things under 0.25BTC are traded for litecoins instead
2) CPU mining remains the best way to mine LTC
3) The current speed of acceptance keeps up
4) more people mine, the generation rate is too high for the amount of miners we have, a lot of slow-medium speed miners would be a good thing.

#4 thats me right there! LOL 15-18 kilohashes

[Garr255]

I have 30 haha

[vmarchuk]

I not understand why is need for altcoins. What wrong with Bitcoin ? I mine litecoin for while then make yao ming face when see price on btc-e.