
Litecoin nears $10 - up from $4 a day ago - samwilliams
http://www.ltc-charts.com/period-charts.php?period=5-days&resolution=hour&pair=ltc-usd&market=btc-e
======
oleganza
It's going to be interesting. There's inherently no technical difference
between LTC and BTC (block intervals are not drastically different in
practice, and nominal count of coins is meaningless). Network effect-wise,
Bitcoin has much more hashing power (and thus resistance to 51% attack) than
Litecoin, but it is also more valuable one, so it also does not matter much.

I don't buy there's any "diversification" in holding both LTC and BTC. The
technical and legal risks are mostly the same. To me, in the long run, it's
more profitable to put 100% of your money in the most liquid of them, which is
currently Bitcoin. Simply because people want one money: one most marketable,
most widely accepted asset.

LTC is still valuable because we are in a very early speculation phase and
most folks got used to presence of both gold and silver, and there's very
strong incentive for recent Bitcoin miners with video cards to pump up LTC (as
that's the only thing to mine on their equipment right now) and sell out for
Bitcoin while they can. Either Bitcoin or Litecoin must pop, there's no
economic reason for them to stay in some balanced relation. I bet even gold
will largely lose wealth as it's moved to Bitcoin, but then gold has very
different risks and features, so it may find its balance with Bitcoin.

~~~
neomindryan
> there's no economic reason for them to stay in some balanced relation.

Actually, there might be. The fee needed to get a bitcoin transaction into the
blockchain is determined by a market, and it is a flat number, not a
percentage of the transaction. If bitcoin succeeds, it may not be practical to
use it for smaller transactions.

~~~
oleganza
It's neither a flat number, nor a percentage. Fee is not hard-coded in the
protocol, everyone can decide on the fee himself. Users decide how much they
want to pay and miners decide how to prioritise transactions. The fee is
freely floating in both LTC and BTC, no difference here. The only practical
difference is liquidity and it is produced only by network effect which tends
to create "one of a kind" winner in a competition between very similar
networks.

~~~
neomindryan
If the maximum block size limit ever constrains the volume of transactions,
what will happen to the fee people decide to pay?

~~~
oleganza
Block size limit will be raised as soon as there's a pressure of transactions.
Miners are not interested in devaluing their savings because Bitcoin is too
expensive to use for newcomers.

[http://blog.oleganza.com/post/43849158813/this-is-how-
block-...](http://blog.oleganza.com/post/43849158813/this-is-how-block-size-
limit-will-be-raised)

------
fenollp
LTC is a ponzy scheme, unlike BTC.

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Litecoin#Pump_and_Dump_Scheme](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Litecoin#Pump_and_Dump_Scheme)

~~~
genericacct
No, they all are, and frankly, I am putting the following line in my hosts
file until you all grow up a little and go discuss your toy currencies
somewhere else

127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com

~~~
dingaling
> 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com

That's quite inefficient. Your browser ( and any other apps ) will attempt to
connect to your legacy IPv4 localhost, time-out and fail, assuming you don't
have a web server listening there.

Better to black-hole with an unroutable address. Try [::].

~~~
kybernetyk
Will it really be a timeout? I thought the OS will send back a RST packet on
ports it doesn't listen.

------
jnbiche
Part of this rise is likely due to the proposal of Mike Hearn, a core
developer and Bitcoin Foundation officer, to start "redlisting" (marketing-
friendly word for blacklisting) wayward Bitcoin addresses.

How someone who has been around the Bitcoin world for so long doesn't
understand the importance of the currency's fungibility is beyond me. If you
make one person's Bitcoins worth less than another person's Bitcoins, then we
all lose.

~~~
primitivesuave
Hearn only proposed there be a discussion on the matter, he definitely didn't
seem like he was pushing either way.

~~~
jnbiche
Yes, he proposed the idea for the second time in a year "just for discussion".
And the first time he proposed it, he definitely and very explicitly argued in
favor of it. If he's more subtle this time, it's because he's learned this is
an issue that is deeply important to most long-time Bitcoiners, since it's an
assault on one of the most fundamental of Bitcoin's properties.

------
jamoes
In my opinion, a better way to price LTC is in BTC. So, I prefer the LTC/BTC
chart: [http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/period-
charts.php?period=1-...](http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/period-
charts.php?period=1-year&resolution=day&pair=ltc-btc&market=btc-e)

Looking at it this way: LTC is now up to 0.014 BTC, up from a recent low of
0.01 BTC, and down from a high of 0.0449 BTC back in April.

------
mrspeaker
Is it still worth unleashing a miner on my lappy to go spelunking for
Litecoins, or has that ship sailed too?

~~~
ck2
On a laptop forget it, difficulty is way too high.

------
QuasiAlon
Interesting to see spillover effects from the bitcoin drama over the past few
days

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yitchelle
Noob here. Are the various crypto currencies floating around exchangeable via
a trading exchange of sorts?

~~~
ngpio
BTC-e is the most popular. I believe Vircurex[1] handles the largest number of
cryptocurrencies.

[1] [https://vircurex.com/](https://vircurex.com/)

------
brador
Litecoin could be the spark that causes the Bitcoin crash. Hear me out.

Method: litecoin gets major news push as the "new Bitcoin", people sell out of
bitcoins into litecoin causing Bitcoin prices to crash overnight.

Needed: a very fast way to move from bitcoin holdings to litecoin.

If someone makes that it's game over for bitcoin.

~~~
jnbiche
> Needed: a very fast way to move from bitcoin holdings to litecoin.

There are _many_ very easy ways to quickly move from Bitcoin to Litecoin. On
btc-e.com, for example, you can sign up and be trading Bitcoin>Litecoin within
an hour or less (the time needed for Bitcoins deposits to clear).

~~~
brador
Right, so now all we need is the mainstream news push.

------
jackgolding
Is there a cryptocurrency index anyone has made?

~~~
QuasiAlon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies

------
hayksaakian
I love it.

Diversification of investments is awesome.

~~~
shubb
But Bitcoin is a gamble not an investment - its value may be 1000% or 1% of
its current value next year, and neither of us can really predict that. Sure I
own some (I made like 100% so far), but its a lottery ticket.

I'd say that investing in a high growth startup is a gamble, but investing in
100 is an investment.

Which links to your diversity of investment thing.

If you invested in 100 startups in the same niche, for instance 500 bitcoin
exchanges, that would not be diversified. You would be betting on the same
business model.

If crypto currencies are discredited - the buyers today get burned by the big
crash and never come back, or laws change to make it too inconvenient to
bother investing in (all the exchanges are pushed into he black market), then
the litecoin price will dive like bitcoin and stay there.

~~~
mikro2nd
> its value may be 1000% or 1% of its current value next year, and neither of
> us can really predict that

True enough, but then we could say much the same thing for the fiat currency
of your choice. (Except maybe the CHF? ;)

~~~
sentenza
No. All significant 'real world' currencies are tied to the economy of a
nation-state or nation-state-like entity.

Bitcoin et al are free-floating in that regard. To see how this makes a
difference, consider what would happen if one of the early adopters were to
sell 100K bitcoins right now.

~~~
mikro2nd
(I'm not arguing that Bitcoin is somehow less volatile than fiat currencies,
here, but...)

The values of "Real world" currencies is quite (not totally) decoupled from
the intrinsic value of the issuing state's economy. See Zimbabwe for a recent
object lesson - still plenty of economic activity and trade going on in the
country, but hyperinflation happened anyway. "Real world" currencies are much
more tied to emotional attachments (or lack thereof) to the currency and faith
in its issuer.

If you've ever tried your hand at forex speculation, you'll be very (perhaps
painfully) just how much the relative values between fiat currencies is driven
by emotion (and the stop-loss orders of other speculators.)

~~~
shubb
Shares and currencies...

In theory, analysts and professional traders incorperate everything they know
into bids for shares, so that the current share price 'prices in' everything
publicly known about a share at the current time.

I quite often talk to people who have a share portfolio, and buy mining shares
because they think international demand for mining is going to rise. But the
share price already reflects that because pro investors and analysts though to
it first.

So really, when you buy a share, unless you have some extra information, you
are making a bet on variations due to things no one knows at the time - it's
simply a gamble.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a terrible idea to buy shares - if the economy
grows, the FTSE grows with it. If you buy luxury goods manufacturers and
insolvency companies, you can hedge. But if you, as a private individual,
think you can make money day trading (in your lunch break) against the highest
paid experts in the world, well you are kinda nuts.

A friend put together a database of tick data for every currency pair in the
world, for a spread of different brokers. He examined the data, and found that
at last in the 3 hour / day interval, it appeared statistically random. You
can bet on a random variable if you like, sometimes you will make money. I
prefer to put what little money I have in passive funds, and hope it beats
inflation^.

^That said, I'm cashed out and 400% ahead following this bitcoin bubble. lol

------
shomyo
Who cares.

