
Coinbase adds support for Litecoin - tmlee
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/03/coinbase-adds-support-for-litecoin/
======
lend000
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.

Regardless, it's a good time to be a cryptocurrency investor. We're still in
1996 in Dot Com Bubble time.

~~~
Taek
Bitcoin has by far the greatest amount of research and intellectual effort
driving it, and it's far from a static protocol. It doesn't need to have
gotten everything perfect, it needs to change just quickly (or slowly) enough
to retain its core value proposition vs. other cryptocurrencies.

Maybe it will get replaced, maybe not. But there's no question to me that
Bitcoin is by far the most decentralized, most secure, safest option of all
the cryptocurrencies, including the nasty miner situation happening right now.

Ethereum is in second place, but the dev team has worked hard to maintain full
control over the direction of the protocol, including frequent hardforks and
promise of future hardforks.

Ethereum offers a lot that Bitcoin does not, but if the valuation were to pass
Bitcoin's I think it would be fair to state that it's because the market has
chosen to prefer low security, low decentralisation, high (yet unrealized)
innovation potential over a decentralized payment system.

I wouldn't consider it a bad thing for bitcoin, and I also wouldn't consider
Bitcoin dead or misplaced if it gets passed by ethereum​ in market cap. The
decentralization is what is meaningful to me, and I don't know anything else
remotely close.

~~~
pferdone
I would like to hear your opinion why you think Bitcoin is more secure than
Ethereum.

~~~
tudorconstantin
For example they had that bug last year where somebody was able to steal 50
million dollars equivalent ether from the network. IIRC that caused one of the
hard forks and is the reason there are now both eth and etc. That was a bug in
the DAO protocol. I'm not aware of any bugs in the btc protocol to allow
hackers to steal money in their entire 8 years existence

~~~
verroq
It wasn't a bug with the protocol though. It was a bug with the coding of the
contract.

However there has been a few forks to mitigate DDoS attacks.

~~~
gnaritas
No, it was worse; it was a bug in the community that proved people aren't
really willing to abide by smart contracts when they feel they lost. That
incident split the community in half with one side willing to tear down the
entire thing just to make sure the thief didn't get away with it. And now
there are 2 Ethereums.

~~~
codingmyway
Ironically that might be a reason for the later increase in the price of ETH
compared to ETC as corporate types like the idea of being able to 'roll back'
the chain in the event of fraud or a serious bug and don't appreciate that the
DAO fork was a one-off event where the majority of the stakeholders were in
favor due to their foolish purchase of DAO tokens.

------
pyabo
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.

~~~
kordless
I would modify that slightly and say Litecoin is back because of the Lightning
Network, which benefits greatly from features provided by Segwit, and which
itself leverages payment channels backed by multi-sig addresses. While
Lightning can be enabled without Segwit, it's far more trustworthy with it,
than without it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpfvhiqFw7A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpfvhiqFw7A)

~~~
flyingfences
> which benefits greatly from features provided by Segwit

Which is only possible because of the features provided by SegWit.

~~~
kordless
Actually, that's not technically true. FWIU, Lighting could be run on both
Bitcoin and Litecoin today, but issues with transaction malleability could
cause it to be less than trustworthy, for some use cases. So, Segwit, which
fixes transaction mailability by moving the header in the transaction to it's
own section, enables a higher trust Lightning network to be deployed, on top
of a more trustworthy blockchain.

~~~
flyingfences
Your understanding is correct AFAIK. However, the entire point of Bitcoin (and
cryptocurrencies in general) is that it's a system that does not have to rely
on trust. A "less than trustworthy" implementation is not a tenable
implementation. In order for L2 solutions to be truly, universally usable we
need a fix for transaction malleability.

Don't trust. Verify.

------
jerguismi
Segregated witness should activate in litecoin in about ~6 days.

[http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php](http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php)

~~~
andy_ppp
What is this?

~~~
proto-n
A somewhat controversial protocol upgrade developed for bitcoin. On the
bitcoin network it has not reached the necessary support yet. Most bitcoiners
view its activation on litecoin as a large scale beta test.

~~~
cashmonkey85
This is really not the case. It's been pair reviewed and testing for 2 years.
Plus has been run on testnet since last year. It's technically superior and
should be activated on bitcoin but it's been blocked for political reasons

~~~
proto-n
You are reacting to something my comment doesn't say: that somehow segwit is
not good enough. I only said it was somewhat controversial (which it is, for
whatever reasons, didn't say it was technical) and that bitcoiners view it as
a beta test, which is/was a widely accepted sentiment on both /r/Bitcoin and
/r/btc. I didn't even say it needed one.

I said the latter more to illustrate the relationship between segwit+bitcoin
and segwit+litecoin than segwit itself.

------
Uptrenda
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.)

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.)

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 ...

~~~
neomindryan
All of this was arguably true two weeks ago.

Today, Litecoin has locked in support for Segwit, and in about a week it will
be possible to create Lightning Network transactions using Litecoin.

This is largely due to the efforts of the creator, Charlie Lee, who was able
to build consensus among the community to activate Segwit.

Contrast this with the inability of the Bitcoin Community over the last few
years to get any improvements added.

You may think this is a bad thing because Litecoin has a more centralized
authority governing it, or you may think it's a good thing because Litecoin
has a way to improve itself, but either way I'd argue Litecoin has very
recently become more than what you described.

~~~
h1d
This. As the price indicated, it was 1/10 the value of itself from the Chinese
bubble while Bitcoin has reached all time high now until it realized its use
as a good real world test of the Bitcoin's newer features when Bitcoin
struggled to apply those due to political and financial conflict within the
community but Litecoin went ahead being a much smaller community and is the
first to have it activated.

Being almost identical to Bitcoin actually increased its value as its results
can be a good indication for Bitcoin as well.

As a cryptocurrency, it's pretty much of no use but as a real world play
ground for newer features for Bitcoin, it's pretty optimal and it just proved
it has a room to stay than being irrelevant.

~~~
Kinnard
Well, if it's useful for all those reasons, and it can be traded for a useful
cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and Ether and now USD and to do everything a
cryptocurrency can do then its useful . . . right?

You basically just said it's Bitcoin's more progressive, more nimble cousin.

------
NamTaf
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.

~~~
oelmekki
Actually, fundamentals radically changed.

Last year, litecoin was stilll "the first altcoin historically, which is just
a duplicate of bitcoin and is mostly unmaintained". This year, it suddenly
became bitcoin's staging area.

For those not aware, there's an ongoing heated debate in bitcoin about
scalability issues that just seems to be unable to find consensus between
several concurrent solution propositions. Litecoin came and implemented one,
so we now can see how it performs. They are now moving on to implement
lightning network, which is an other feature proposed for bitcoin for a long
time. That being said, it will stop being "bitcoin's staging area" the minute
bitcoin will go with an other choice that the one that was tested in litecoin.
What litecoin would do? I don't see it asking miners to rollback a feature.

There's an other fundamental to consider : as for now, litecoin is more
scalable than bitcoin. This means that should bitcoin fail spectacularly
because of its scaling problems, litecoin would be the safe replacement
choice, as it's exactly the same thing, but without scalability issues - due
to mentioned features recent add. It would be a bit sad not to replace bitcoin
with a more modern coin, like ethereum, but that's still something that could
make litecoin relevant.

~~~
runeks
> Last year, litecoin was stilll "the first altcoin historically, which is
> just a duplicate of bitcoin and is mostly unmaintained". This year, it
> suddenly became bitcoin's staging area.

Bitcoin already has a staging area, called testnet3. The coins in this network
are worthless.

~~~
oelmekki
The difference between both is that you can actually use litecoin, so we have
an idea how features perform in real conditions. Call that a beta area rather
than a staging area if you prefer, but I guess you see the difference between
litecoin and testnet.

~~~
runeks
You're right. The fact that litecoins have monetary value means that real
merchants and consumers have an interest in participating (beta testers), as
opposed to testnet3 where no actual value can be transferred.

------
sxp
I wonder if the sudden increase in price over April is related to to Coinbase
buying up LTC to fill their reserves:
[http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/litecoin/](http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/litecoin/)

------
eelkefolmer
Litecoin spiked up from $16 to $36 this morning. Trading on GDAX (also part of
coinBase) has far lower fees (0.25%) than coinBase (1.5%)

~~~
massaman_yams
Or zero fees, if you're a market maker.

------
tuxracer
Is there a reason a lot of these cryptocurrencies have suddenly started to
skyrocket all at once?

~~~
SirensOfTitan
1\. BTC has been increasingly acting unstably: transactions cost a lot and
take a long time to confirm. The BTC core development team has proven itself
incompetent and unable to handle the situation properly.

2\. In Litecoin's case: its activation of Segwit may attract BTC core and
other BTC enthusiasts.

3\. Ethereum's recovery from DAO hack. I personally think the swift hard fork
in this scenario was a great call, and it really convinced me of the
leadership at the Ethereum Foundation.

4\. Second generation proof-of-stake systems are increasingly looking like
they'll work. A movement away from proof-of-work as a consensus algorithm I
find crucial to the long term success of any cryptocurrency.

5\. BTC ETF (and Ethereum ETF certainly also going to be denied by the SEC)
application and the Winklevii garnered cryptocurrencies a lot of attention.

Overall, I think people are finally metaphorically grasping the concepts
around cryptocurrencies. As a result of this, several currencies are coming
out that are rapidly outpacing BTC in innovation, especially Ethereum.

~~~
sayurichick
regarding #1, Core isn't incompetent; This is currently the exact situation
they want to hold (preventing a hard fork and block size limit increase).

They have nefariously manipulated media communications for years to fool
people into only accepting a soft fork because they've convinced people a soft
fork is somehow safer and any hard fork is automatically contentious. As long
as a hard fork is never initiated, they retain write access to the github repo
and therefore maintain control of the "default" Bitcoin client. And as long as
Greg Maxwell is in charge, he can continue to receive funding for his startup
(blockstream).

But yea, crippling layer 1 intentionally and misleading people for their own
benefit is incredibly fucked up.

------
hultner
Is Litecoin still gaining momentum at a significant pace?

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?

How well does Litecoin fare against the congestion problems we've heard about
from the Bitcoin communities?

~~~
VMG
You can't rank altcoins by market cap, it's a very flawed indicator. Unlike
Bitcoin, none of the Altcoins currently have any use outside speculation,
including Ethereum. There is significant skepticism that Ethereum could
deliver on it's promises if it was widely used.

Litecoin is an almost identical clone of Bitcoin. The network recently decided
to implement a change (called SegWit) that will help with scalability
(enabling [https://lightning.network/](https://lightning.network/)). Segwit
was originally planned for Bitcoin, but it turned out to be highly
controversial and was therefore hasn't been activated for Bitcoin yet.

In my opinion, Litecoin will be the best scaling crypto-currency in a few
weeks.

~~~
hultner
Makes me curious. If not by market cap, how would you rank them?

~~~
VMG
It's hard to find objective metrics. I would look at real-world usage and
utility. The currencies fall in a very clear distribution there -- bitcoin and
all others.

~~~
geppeto
The ole e-commerce metric. Does anyone else hate when they have tunnel vision
for years and are made aware of a really amazing opportunity they should have
noticed earlier?

Many crypto tokens are dividend producing assets, just like most separate
corporate bonds have yields.

Sure there may be somebody wishing the dutch east india company's bonds were
successful in underpinning global finance for 500 years, but the reality is
that it pioneered a high yielding asset class.

In crypto, there are investible assets, and many people want them as they can
gain decent yield from them. Those networks don't require mass transactions
per block to be valuable. But you can also create applications on those
networks to make them even more valuable.

~~~
alanfalcon
Fascinating analogy. Are you saying that the rise in Bitcoin's value recently
is driven not by speculation so much as more people realizing Bitcoin's true
value as an investible asset? And where are the yields coming from if not
speculation ... ICOs?

~~~
geppeto
But to actually answer your questions that are tailored to bitcoin, I would
say bitcoins recent rise has nothing to do with that. Cryptocurrencies' rise
is though.

~~~
alanfalcon
Understood, thanks for your informative replies.

------
cableshaft
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).

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.

~~~
iopq
Back in the day, I literally sent a check to some guy via snail mail to get
some Bitcoins. That was the BEST way to acquire them!

~~~
cableshaft
Yeah, and there was a whole site based around finding local people willing to
meet you in a parking lot or coffeehouse, you give them the money, they give
you the coins, drug deal style. That was just about the only other way to get
it at the time.

------
joshuaswaney
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.

------
danielleheong
So little activity until 1st of April. What gives...
[https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/litecoin/btc/90_da...](https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/litecoin/btc/90_days)

~~~
bitcoinstudent
Litecoin founder came back and started working on SegWit.

~~~
odrekf
"Litecoin founder"

Funny how people get pride from copy/pasting Bitcoin's code.

------
kzisme
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?

Is there a reason I should start using these currencies? Aside from trading
currencies to make a few bucks?

~~~
if_by_whisky
There's a growing interest in the underlying technology's implications for
fintech. I think largely because transactions can be ultra fast, ultra cheap,
and can execute auditable, but arbitrary custom logic. ACH is extremely old,
very slow, inflexible, and still used across the world for large financial
transactions.

~~~
runeks
> I think largely because transactions can be ultra fast, ultra cheap, and can
> execute auditable, but arbitrary custom logic.

Blockchains are neither fast nor cheap; their value is trustlessness, not
performance. The SWIFT network handled 15 million transfers per day in 2015
[1], Bitcoin's current maximum is around 600k per day/~7 transactions per
second. That being said, the Bitcoin-limit is self-imposed (1MB per block),
but even so the security of the network weakens as storage requirements for
nodes increase, so _some_ limit is required, in my opinion.

The value of crypto currencies is in the decentralized/trustless medium of
exchange. I think, in the end, we will use various clearing protocols on top
of Bitcoin, in order to circumvent the slow on-Blockchain settlement (just
like VISA handles consumer-to-merchant transactions instead of SWIFT). It's
very much like gold: perfect as a store of value, but relatively cumbersome to
transfer from person to person.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interban...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Worldwide_Interbank_Financial_Telecommunication)

~~~
if_by_whisky
Your view reflects that of most of the bitcoin community. And it's true that
the promise of trustless, decentralized transactions certainly got the price
of bitcoin to where it is now-- but I think there's something more for fintech
in crypto than digital gold.

At least, that hope is why I myself dabble. I also think it's why there's so
much enterprise investment in ethereum.

------
ptenk
This rise is driven by Coinbase alone. The premium there was like 30-40% to
other exchanges at one point.

~~~
koudelka
Not so, Segregated Witness adoption pushed it from $4 to about $15.

------
edpichler
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?

PS: I am a Bitcoin enthusiast, and I am not criticizing Litecoin, I just want
to understand the possible advantages it could have.

~~~
hybridsole
Litecoin has a fraction of the transaction fees of bitcoin, so instead of
buying something that costs $10 and paying about $1 in miners fees, with LTC
you would pay a few pennies at most. Granted, most retailers only accept
Bitcoin if they accept cryptocurrency at all, but this may change as more
people use LTC for smaller payments.

~~~
edpichler
What transaction fees you mean? I can transfer between wallets with no cost
using BTC right?

~~~
NeutronBoy
They're "optional", but the miners can pick and chose which transactions they
include in a block, and the larger the fee they get from the transaction, the
more likely it is to make it into the block.

~~~
bhaak
They are optional but it is no longer safe to send a transaction without fees
as the code in Bitcoin that allowed for free transactions if they met certain
rules has been removed.

You might get lucky but you can always resend with fees to push it through.

------
quotha
This is all gonna end bad

~~~
koolba
That's what's cool about a ponzi scheme. The end doesn't matter as long as
there's enough bumps on the ride to bring in fresh suckers.

~~~
vocatus_gate
Do you even know what a ponzi scheme is?

~~~
koolba
Yes. What part of a crypto currency with no established usage outside of
speculation would exclude it from being labeled as such?

~~~
vocatus_gate
From Black's Law Dictionary:

Ponzi Scheme: "...Money from the new investors is used directly to repay or
pay interest to earlier investors"

Bitcoin does not fit the definition of Ponzi scheme for numerous reasons:

\- There are no paid dividends to anyone

\- The purpose of using bitcoin isn’t to recruit new participants

\- There’s no centralized body that funnels money up to the top

\- Unlike Ponzi schemes, Bitcoin retains value and continues to function even
if no new participants join the ecosystem

Bitcoin fails the litmus test for a Ponzi scheme in any number of ways. The
boring reality is that it is just a value transfer network that grows more
useful the more people join it (much like a telephone network grows more
valuable the more people are reachable on it).

~~~
koolba
We're talking about litecoin, not bitcoin.

The ponzi aspect of it is that it's inherently worthless and people who bought
in early are paid off by money (or even bitcoin) coming from later suckers.

~~~
flyingfences
By your definition the entire stock market is a ponzi scheme because early
investors are "paid off" when they sell their shares to later investors.

~~~
koolba
Most (all?) publicly traded companies produce something of value which is sold
and translates to income and profits.

A better analogy would be buying gold which produces no dividends.

An even better analogy would be pyrite.

~~~
flyingfences
Is a distributed, public, immutable, trustless ledger not something of value?

~~~
koolba
Not if nobody is using it. As I've mentioned a number of times, we're talking
about litecoin, not bitcoin. And this isn't like silver and gold either.

~~~
flyingfences
But people are using it.

------
dvdhsu
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?

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.

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!

~~~
developer2
The way people are treating cryptocurrency exchanges makes absolutely no sense
to me. Most people are buying into it because they are absolutely certain they
will manage to cash out once the currency hits an extreme "all time high".
When such a peak occurs whereby the top 1% - as determined by number of coins
owned - cashes out, everyone else who jumped on the bandwagon thinking they
would also cash out is going to be left with exactly nothing.

Let's be absolutely clear: your coins are only worth what someone is willing
to pay. And when the one and only true "run on the bank" of one of these
currencies happens, it will happen within the span of less than an hour. All
these people who are buying to eventually cash out are going to blink and
wonder what the hell happened.

Take BTC as the example right now. All over the place, people are showing
regret for not buying in a few years ago. No average BTC "shareholder" is
going to be able to cash out for more than mere pennies. The majority of coins
are owned by big players, and you are effectively dumping your cash into their
pockets by buying into it.

BTC's Nakamoto "promises" they will never cash out their enormous share. How
nice of them. The community can monitor Nakamoto's wallets all they want. I
can't wait for him/her to cash out their BTC, and screw over the entire
system. I'm just sitting here ready to laugh.

~~~
bhaak
> Let's be absolutely clear: your coins are only worth what someone is willing
> to pay. And when the one and only true "run on the bank" of one of these
> currencies happens, it will happen within the span of less than an hour. All
> these people who are buying to eventually cash out are going to blink and
> wonder what the hell happened.

That's not so different than what can happen in real life with currencies,
isn't it? So at least the goal of treating Bitcoin like a currency has been
met.

Those that got in early enough or have already cashed out usually keep their
mouth shut. For those who regard it as a speculative asset and only want to
get rich and now lament that they missed the early adopter phase, yeah, such
people exist. I know several of them personally. It's always interesting to
argue with them and yes, it would be better if there were regulations to
protect them.

Greed is a bad investment strategy and it's only profit if you are willing to
take profit. But people that push out the profit taking will always complain
about not getting enough and most of them will get burned.

> BTC's Nakamoto "promises" they will never cash out their enormous share. How
> nice of them. The community can monitor Nakamoto's wallets all they want. I
> can't wait for him/her to cash out their BTC, and screw over the entire
> system. I'm just sitting here ready to laugh.

I see, you are not a true Buttcoin believer. Let me paraphrase an old meme: If
Bitcoin succeeds, you won't have to cash out.

Jokes aside, Satoshi never made a promise to not cash out. It's likely,
he/she/them are dead or lost the keys to their private wallet. Even in the
unlikely case of Satoshi still being alive and having access to the coins, the
minute this coins move, the price will plummet. And you can be sure that many
people are watching these coins, a move will be noticed. Immediately.

~~~
developer2
>> he/she/them are dead or lost the keys to their private wallet[...] the
minute this coins move, the price will plummet. And you can be sure that many
people are watching these coins, a move will be noticed. Immediately.

This aspect of BTC specifically makes me roar with laughter. The fact that
anyone is willing to hope that Nakamoto's coins are "lost", discounting their
very real value should he/she be sitting on that cash cow. What a great con on
their part. You say trading of those coins will be noticed "immediately". The
transaction log will cement that trade before (well, as) it's noticed. The
only thing people will notice is the aftermath. Those who are personally
monitoring the blockchain with automation will notify themselves within 5
minutes, while the public at large won't figure it out for hours. By the time
the "BTC is now worthless" headlines hit the major news outlets, it will be
too late for the average user to cash out.

~~~
bhaak
It would be a great con, indeed. Going into hiding for 7 years so far, at a
time when Bitcoin wasn't worth much, hoping that in time it will grow in
value.

But tell me how to cash out any of those bitcoins that are supposed to be
Satoshis without crashing the price? Just because it's on the blockchain
doesn't mean anything as that only shows that those coins have changed
ownership. They haven't been converted to fiat at that time.

Being able to sell on exchanges usually takes a few confirmations and by then,
enough people will have heard the news of the coins moving and the price will
already have plummeted significantly. Sure, those old coins would still be
worth something but the actual monetary gain would be much less and Bitcoin
itself might not survive such an event.

You could of course trade those coins over the counter, just sell the private
keys or another method of an off-chain transaction but that still leaves the
issue on how to cash out eventually?

------
nnfy
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?

~~~
oelmekki
I hope not for them, because there clearly was insider news at play, here.

While litecoin was rising in previous months and its coinbase addition has
been rumored, technical analysis two days ago shown compression and it was not
expected to have any big move before tomorrow. Then, out of nowhere, ltc
spiked, yesterday. 3 hours later, it was announced that litecoin was being
added on coinbase.

~~~
oelmekki
Btw, I'm only in trading since cryptos and don't know classic markets, I would
love someone to explain to me why using insider news is a crime.

The thing is, it only seems fair to me to be able to exploit insider news.
Employees from a company are not affected by stock price change, at least not
in a good way ; because when stocks go the wrong way, they'll certainly feel
it by being asked more for less in their work. So it seems only fair that
someone working in a company could benefit from knowing what is going on there
: they would have a part of the pie, for once.

~~~
gnaritas
> I would love someone to explain to me why using insider news is a crime.

Because a market isn't fair if everyone doesn't have the same information
available to them. Trading on insider information is literally stealing from
those who don't have it. Imagine the CEO of a company knowing he's about to
announce bad news and shorting his own stock ahead of the announcement to make
millions from it, then buying it all up cheap at the bottom before announcing
some large new government contract causing the price to rebound and making
more millions again... all that money he's making, he's stealing from the
general public by knowing what's going to happen ahead of time and using it to
have an unfair advantage. Insider trading is like knowing the future, that's
not a fair market.

~~~
oelmekki
Oh, ok. I see the point, thanks for explaining.

That's funny because fairness was exactly what I had in mind to _allow_
insider trading, but using the point of view of fairness between investors and
workers, rather than fairness between investors.

What would you think about allowing insider trading, but only once during
career at company and only if you're not an executive? Or maybe just allowing
it for a moderate amount of money?

~~~
gnaritas
I think no, it's theft whether you do it once or many times; you are stealing
money from investors who cannot make a decision fairly because they don't have
the "private" information you do. Insider trading is theft.

~~~
oelmekki
Ok, I see. Well, I agree with you there. But I have an other problem here :
it's theft as well when people who keep buying and selling property keep
profiting on people who actually keep companies running, who keep losing.

Trump, Lepen, what is called populism (I hate that word) feed on that. People
feel that what they produce is being stolen. I, for one, don't want to think
that finance is a problem. I think it's going too far, though, and that
History is taking its revenge (or that it's on a downtrend?).

I require your help here to stop the hate : can you think of something that
allows to be fair to both those who own property and those who create its
value?

EDIT : or, to get more conceptual : you're fair to everyone, or you're fair to
no one. Fairness is not a thing that applies to only a few, it's the exact
opposite, by definition.

~~~
gnaritas
> it's theft as well when people who keep buying and selling property keep
> profiting on people who actually keep companies running, who keep losing.

I still don't understand what your complaint actually is? How are people who
buy and sell stock being unfair to those who work at the company? The company
got it's fair deal when it IPO'd and sold shares in exchange for money to
operate. That investors later trade that stock back and forth between
themselves doesn't affect the company who already got paid. If an investor
makes money off a stock going up or down, it has no affect at all on the
employees of the company so how exactly do you figure they're being treated
unfairly?

~~~
oelmekki
Complaint is a strong word, I'm not an employee myself, I'm just trying to
think about what is fair :)

> That investors later trade that stock back and forth between themselves
> doesn't affect the company who already got paid.

This is where we don't agree. I've seen plenty of times companies that made
profit being moved to other countries where work is cheaper, or companies that
were doing not so well asking salary cuts, then not giving salary back when
things were doing better, and distributing bonus instead. Now that I'm in
trading, I know why : this is a mean to produce "good news" and make stock
rise. There is unfairness to employees, there, and people are getting more and
more angry against finance because of that, this will end badly.

This is why I think allowing them to trade insider news - maybe with a
moderate amount of money maximum - could defuse potential conflict. We could
say to employees : "yes, stock value is a prime to us. But look, you can make
good with it doing your own easy profits". It doesn't have to be about
millions. Most employees would be very happy with an extra $500 here and
there.

The message sent by making insider trading a crime could be heard that way :
we're making money with your work that we don't really care about because we
won't own stock from your company a year from now, we're deteriorating your
work environment, and we'll punish you if you try to join the party.

~~~
oelmekki
Here's an other idea : insider trading could be allowed only for buying on
good news. That way, there won't be people owning stock losing big money
without warning. Investors won't have a chance to buy stock, but this is a
miss opportunity, not harm, and they'll have plenty other opportunities
elsewhere, or they can even jump in during rise and still make profit, just
smaller than usual. It could even be a good thing : I love to trade small
amount during big unpredicted spikes, because their pullback is big as well
for a few minutes, and I often make my day just on those (when there's no news
and no TA reason, moves get crazy).

It would harm shorters, but since those ones are wishing harm to the company,
it still seems fair.

~~~
gnaritas
> It would harm shorters, but since those ones are wishing harm to the
> company, it still seems fair.

No, it isn't fair; this notion that shorters are somehow bad guys is bigotry.
Shorters are just as important as those who go long in keeping prices
accurate, they are not bad in any way and thinking it's "fair" to fuck them is
a symptom you don't understand the market. Shorters don't wish harm on
companies, rather they see companies are irrationally overvalued or see the
company is doing something to risky or behaving badly and expect the stock
price to fall. Don't be a bigot against trading one directly over the other,
they're both the same.

And no, no insider trading at all, it's always stealing; you can't come up
with a way to justify stealing. It's not ok to steal from investors to make up
for being treated unfairly by your company.

