
Coinbase hires Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin - FredEE
http://blog.coinbase.com/post/56906034176/welcome-charlie-lee-creator-of-litecoin-to-the-team
======
mikemoka
I can't be convinced that bitcoin is anything but inevitable, and I think that
it will, at some point in the near future, solve its apparent problems by
means of a company born from its very ecosystem

~~~
dragontamer
BTC is going to have issues as long as it takes a significant period of time
to confirm a BTC transfer. I'm seeing reports of people trying to buy coffee,
but the BTC transfer takes so long to confirm that the customer is long gone
before you know whether or not the BTCs really transferred.

Nothing can stop this either, it is innate to the system. BTC confirmations
will take on the average 10minutes, but can last much longer in practice.
Attempts to mitigate this issue only result in rebuilding credit-cards /
accounts / virtual money systems on top of BTC... which then begs the
question... why not just use a Credit Card as always?

Litecoin tries to solve the problem by making the block discovery process much
quicker (among other things). These "virtual coins" will need to go through
several revisions before they're really useful.

~~~
TomGullen
Can't there exist a company that accepts Bitcoin transactions on behalf of
clients (shops) and guarantees them? Even if a transaction fails, the company
coughs up, and to make ends meet they charge a small per-transaction fee.

Even without this, it's quite possible that bad bitcoin transactions will be
far less costly to shops on average.

If a shop sells a coffee for $2 paid for by a bad bitcoin transaction, the
shop seller has made around a 50c loss (stock mainly).

If a shop sells a coffee for $2 paid for by a later charge backed credit card
transaction, the shop seller is charged $15[1], plus the 50c stock loss for a
net $15.50 loss! You'd have to have over 30 bad bitcoin transactions to equal
that level of loss.

Chargebacks are a money making operation by the credit card companies, at the
expense of merchants. Bitcoin helps a lot.

[1] [https://stripe.com/help/disputes](https://stripe.com/help/disputes)

~~~
dragontamer
Why would a consumer put up with such a company? You've got the economics
backwards.

Consumers want features such as reversibility of transactions, money back
guarantees, and reward points. Credit Card companies offer _customers_ rights,
not the business.

Businesses put up with credit card companies because it brings them additional
business.

If you want to create a pro-business "transaction framework", go on ahead.
(indeed, the Apple Store does this. All restrictions are strictly for pro-
Apple reasons). But consumers are only willing to put up with so many pro-
business storefronts.

~~~
ISL
Some consumers would rather have lower prices and happier merchants than
rewards points.

I'd much rather pay for my coffee in digital cash than pay an extra 2%+ to
facilitate the transaction. If the product is poor, I just won't buy it again.
Same goes for lunch, etc.

Cards that return ~1% back highlight a problem; the transaction fees are too
high. $0.10/bitcoin transaction [1] is also steep for minor transactions. If
it were more like $0.01, tiny transactions might take off...

Chargeback/escrow services/guarantees are appropriate when the money involved
isn't small in relevant units.

[1]
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees)

~~~
dragontamer
What lower prices? I pay off my credit card every month, and therefore pay
nothing ever. Reward points are icing on the cake, all of these are pulled out
from Merchant transaction fees.

Have you ever looked at what you're paying for in a credit card? Basically
nothing. The merchant pays for everything. (occasionally, the merchant passes
back the savings to you... like the occasional gas station that doesn't take
credit cards, or a store that only accepts credit cards on purchases over $5)

Consumers pay damn near nothing on credit cards. That is why they use them.

~~~
eru
Of course, the merchant fees are included in the prices.

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yapcguy
"Creator" of Litecoin - is this some kind of joke?

Litecoin is a trivial fork of Bitcoin. Litecoin uses scrypt instead of SHA256
for proof-of-work and the total number of coins is 84 million instead of 21
million. That's it!

~~~
enraged_camel
How does it feel to be so embarrassingly ignorant all the time?

~~~
yapcguy
So if I fork Bitcoin by changing the hashing algorithm and tweaking a
parameter, am I suddenly a "creator" too? Get real. This is an insult to
Satoshi Nakamoto.

~~~
eru
Sure. The problem will, of course, be to get anyone to assign any value to
your fork.

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Sealy
I hope that this does not have a detrimental affect to the future development
of Litecoin.

For most, Litecoin to Bitcoin is seen as what Silver is to Gold. Silver in
this sense is credited with its ability to stabilize the price of gold. My
opinion is that if there is to be a future for digital currencies there must
be more then one option available. Currently Litecoin is the leading alt-coin
based on Market cap (which is linked to its value)

Disclosure: Bullish on both BTC and LTC

~~~
eru
How does silver help stabilize the price of gold?

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bredren
Hey, this is pretty awesome. I changed from Authy to Google for my 2 factor
on, which made things more convenient. Passion for crypto and ability to
measurably improve Coinbase.

It will be interesting to see if support for Litecoin takes hold at Coinbase.

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nazgulnarsil
Just a FYI: Litecoin does NOT confirm faster than bitcoins. Based on how the
core bitcoin protocol works (which litecoin does not alter), a halving in
confirmation time is also a halving in reliability of the confirmation.

~~~
gigq
In practice it doesn't seem to matter. For example btc-e.com who accepts both
bitcoin and litecoin for trading makes you wait 3 confirmations for bitcoin
and 6 confirmations for litecoin. So you are correct that 1 litecoin
transaction is not as reliable as 1 bitcoin transaction but they are not
making you wait 12 litecoin transactions.

Given that btc-e has a lot to lose on double spend attacks I think it's a good
measure of how these two currencies are playing out in the market.

~~~
nullc
The propagation times are very important here. You can get away with faster if
and only if the network communications latency is low enough.

If blocks are too fast you start getting very large reorganizations.

Today litecoin has almost no transactions, so its lower interblock time is not
a problem... Yet.

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gigq
Is anyone else surprised that the creator of Litecoin needed to take a job?
Given that the market cap of Litecoin is 53 million I would have expected the
creator to have mined a good amount of that in the early days.

Of course he may have just wanted to take the job and not needed it but I
would have assumed he would have worked on something for the Litecoin
ecosystem.

~~~
hvidgaard
Perhaps the job is an opportunity for Litecoin that he would otherwise never
have hoped to make happen?

