It will take significant time and effort to overtake Bitcoin's name recognition and first mover advantage. However, there's also an advantage to being a second mover that can adapt quickly to a changing environment... I doubt Bitcoin will be the supreme crypto-currency in a few years. It's just too implausible that Bitcoin is perfect enough as is, and/or the community will be able to implement any needed changes before its "competitors" take market share.<p>Regardless, it's a good time to be a cryptocurrency investor. We're still in 1996 in Dot Com Bubble time.
Litecoin is now back because of Segwit. It's Bitcoin's hope to push a final acceptance of Segwit on Bitcoin. But, it doesn't have a real value in my opinion.
About cryptocurrencies in general I can say that I use them to get payments and to pay employees and I find them very useful and the user experience is much better than normal banking (fast international transfers and complete tracking) and no need for KYC.
Segregated witness should activate in litecoin in about ~6 days.<p><a href="http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php" rel="nofollow">http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php</a>
I never really got the appeal of Litecoin. It was basically just a copy and paste of Bitcoin with only minor alterations made to the source code (like changing the PoW for Script which never really defeated ASICs and a few other small changes.) It made no major innovations that can be named and even to this day it still lacks several of the major bug fixes that made it into Bitcoin (there are still patches missing from like ~2014 that result in the software being even harder to use for devs than Bitcoin.)<p>This is not coming from a Bitcoin Maximalist, by the way (not presently a fan of Bitcoin either.) Just thought I'd point out how bizarre it is that Litecoin even has a price at all when the software is functionally similar to Dogecoin. It's only real claim to fame is that it copy-pasted the code earlier than most other cryptocurrencies and hence now survives as a zombie currency backed by the souls of all the bag-holders foolish enough to invest in it (much like how Yahoo continues to survive to this day.)<p>Can we all just agree that Litecoin is a way over-hyped and silly excuse for a cryptocurrency? Silver to Bitcoin's gold? I can't think of a single problem that Litecoin actually solves compared to ... well, anything. At best: you could say its a speculative instrument tied to the cancerous block size debate. But other than that - is good marketing really worth the price of $21 USD a coin? I can see a lot of people getting screwed by this when the currency inevitably crashes again ...
It seems to me that this is still speculation based on the idea that increased exposure will increase investment in it which will drive the price higher to punters buy up LTC anticipating that it'll rise and thus it self-fulfils. I don't really see what fundamentals have changed to spur such a climb.
I wonder if the sudden increase in price over April is related to to Coinbase buying up LTC to fill their reserves: <a href="http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/litecoin/" rel="nofollow">http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/litecoin/</a>
Is Litecoin still gaining momentum at a significant pace?<p>I'm not quite up to current developments in the crypto coin communities, however my perception from the outside is that Ethereum has replaced Litecoin as the leading altcoin.
Is this incorrect?<p>How well does Litecoin fare against the congestion problems we've heard about from the Bitcoin communities?
About time. I've been waiting for an easy way to get Litecoin for so long. Every time I checked in the past, it seemed to require working with some Russian bank to get things set up, and something would always error out or "not be supported" or some crap and I'd eventually give up, like in the early days of bitcoin (if I had figured out how to successfully buy it I could have bought btc at $7 a coin once, and probably would have over 100 of them now).<p>Would have loved to have grabbed some LTC when it was dirt cheap, but I'll settle for getting in early on Coinbase. Did that shortly after Coinbase added Ethereum at $11, and it's now trading at $89.
Cryptocurrency implementations have to make tradeoffs like any other type of software, and in this case we're looking at the tradeoff between transaction speed and security. Other cryptocurrencies favor anonymity over convenience. Is there a CAP theorem equivalent for these problems? There seems to be a healthy tension between scalability and security at the very least.
So little activity until 1st of April. What gives... <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/litecoin/btc/90_days" rel="nofollow">https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/litecoin/btc/90_da...</a>
I don't really get the draw towards crypto-currencies - aside from mining them to bring more into the pool of available currency - is there a point to purchasing or using them to make purchases?<p>Is there a reason I should start using these currencies? Aside from trading currencies to make a few bucks?
Why should I use litecoin for transfer money when there is bitcoin with more liquidity? I really don't get this yet. Anyone could explain?<p>PS: I am a Bitcoin enthusiast, and I am not criticizing Litecoin, I just want to understand the possible advantages it could have.
Is there interest in a cryptocurrency index fund? The idea is you could just buy an index fund composed of, say, 50% BTC, 20% ETH, 15% LTC and 15% ZEC. I'm fairly certain that one of these cryptocurrencies will 10 or 100x in value over the next 5 years, but buying each one individually is just such a pain. Would you invest?<p>In reality, we'd probably buy the top 10 coins weighted according to some measure, and rebalance once a week. We would send out investor updates and let you know what the weights are, along with performance over the past week.<p>We're YC and our previous idea didn't work out, and this is something we're considering pivoting to. If we get enough interest we'll start one!
Would a vendor like coinbase be subject to any legal repercussions if its employees purchased litecoin before the option to purchase went live, and the price spiked?