
The Pirate Bay is now accepting Litecoin donations - a3voices
http://thepiratebay.is/
======
Aqueous
Litecoin seems to solve the wrong problem with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin's mining difficulty is calibrated fine for having a fixed limit. It's
the fact that Bitcoin and Litecoin both stop at a fixed amount of units that
makes them ultimately deflationary currencies that don't reward spending.

BitCoin is unique in that you can get an exact, real time measure of how the
'economy' is doing, whereas with the American economy these measures are
extrapolated based on statistical work. Somebody should fork bitcoin and
create a monetary policy adjustment algorithm that responds to changes in the
transaction rate and prints more money (i.e., adjusts mining difficulty) in
response. They should also remove the fixed ceiling.

~~~
nwh
I'm not sure why people have a problem directly with the fixed bitcoin limit.
Unless there are some radical changes in medicine in the next few years, none
of us will ever live to 2140 to see it.

~~~
Aqueous
The fixed BitCoin limit means the rate of production of BitCoin is also fixed,
or changes in a determined way. It can't be decreased or increased in response
to changes in the rate of spending. I think a monetary policy algorithm might
actually adjust the rate of production of the coin upwards to counteract
deflation.

~~~
nwh
I imagine you'd struggle to do that reliably though. There's little indicators
in the blockchain as to what an individual coin is worth, and relying on any
external source for data would ruin the decentralised mantra that the currency
is built upon.

~~~
Aqueous
you mean the exchange rate? it wouldn't need to know the exchange rate, just
what volume of bitcoin is changing hands at any given point in time which is
part of the blockchain.

~~~
nwh
I could make two node spam transactions between themselves to drive the rate
up, or make non-relay nodes to poison the network and make it go down. There's
no way of really knowing how many parties are using the blockchain.

------
Wilya
Being open to _donations_ in Litecoin isn't a very big risk to take. They
could also accept donations in HN karma or WoW gold if the infrastructure
enabled them to do so. It's not like it costs them anything.

When people start accepting _payments_ in Litecoin, it will be noteworthy.

~~~
evilduck
Agreed that its not a huge risk, but you can't _spend_ HN karma. Litecoins can
be converted to cash though, so there's at least some difference between the
two.

~~~
jiggy2011
There's actually a marketplace for reddit account that have high karma. It
wouldn't surprise me if such a thing existed for HN accounts also.

------
zizee
This is the second Litecoin article I have seen today. Is there enough space
for two cypto currencies? What problems does Litecoin solve apart from giving
a second chance to those that missed out on the easy early mining of bitcoins?

~~~
abrkn
"Litecoin provides faster transaction confirmations (2.5 minutes on average)
and uses memory-hard, scrypt-based mining proof-of-work algorithm to target
the regular computers and GPUs most people already have."
<http://litecoin.org>

I remember that the original goal was to encourage CPU mining and Litecoin
failed at this.

~~~
nwh
Not to mention, with faster (easier) confirmations you need more of them to
form the same cumulative proof of work. If anything, Litecoin is magnitudes
weaker due to the slower hashrate compared with Bitcoin.

~~~
lucb1e
> _If anything, Litecoin is magnitudes weaker due to the slower hashrate
> compared with Bitcoin_

But that doesn't say anything about Litecoin, it only says something about
Litecoin's current state of being. Bitcoin could similarly be said to have a
hashrate surmountable by a few wealthy companies working together. Things will
improve over time, and certainly if Litecoin proves to be the better, it will
have a bigger hash rate than Bitcoin.

It's like saying "Windows is better because more people use Windows". Yeah of
course there is more support for the most used platform, but that doesn't say
anything about the quality of a newly released OS X. It may well be better,
and in ten years it might be biggest. Not saying it will be, but it might.
Same goes for Bitcoin vs Litecoin hashrate.

------
jere
From the litecoin front page:

>The Litecoin network is therefore scheduled to produce 84 million litecoins,
which is 4 times as many currency units as Bitcoin.

This seems like a completely useless and arbitrary statistic for highlighting
the advantages of a currency.

~~~
dualogy
Oh I can totally see where this will be going from now on. It does set a
useful precedent!

Next up: "LiterCoin---will never exceed 168 circulation units!"

LitestCoin---336 max, guaranteed!

Way to dilute this originally neat "digital gold" idea. So turns out, while
you can't clone BTC, we _can_ copy ideas infinitely, unlike say some heavy-
weight metals rooted firmly in the tangible physical plane :)

Now people will argue "but BTC have all the first-mover network effects!".
Yes, for a time but things move lightning fast on this web we all love, and
don't the "thoughts of many nations" about "high-value proofed against the
elements, politics, technology and time itself" develop over millenia---
generations and generations of attempts to cheat, "corner", fake or "resource
alternatives" a unit only to always admit defeat in the face of the one
superior element?

That is, for those looking for a "hard, deflationary, non-dilutable" asset.
Those will, looking harder, easily find a better one of "ancient world-class
proportions". Those looking for "soft, inflationary, dilutable" transactional
currency of course won't be looking into BTC and its upcoming hundreds of
clones anyway.

Let's face it, not every alternative clone will even make it to a major
exchange but many do! LiteCoin was scheduled for MtGox, many other multi-
currency exchanges let you trade (and thus arbitrage) various BTC clones ad
infinitum. "Currency wars" to follow? ;)

And a couple of them will easily see the same early adopter patterns of BTC.
Look as LiteCoins are already valued at $3!

Three bucks for the 2nd-in-line digital crypto-currency. And that's just early
adopter geeks happy they have a new toy they can still mine with consumer-
grade hardware (ha, gonna play with that myself I think!) and cash out when
convenient. Nothing wrong with that, mind! It's all shots and giggles until
someone giggles and shoots. Or so the saying goes.

And who will defend BTC's "network effect" from such dilution, other than a
few temporary DDoS kiddies? Let the next-in-line currencies trade on MtGox for
a time, bitspend bitpay etc. will find no problem accommodating them ---
perhaps at some point a "basket currency" evolves? Let's call them "eSDR".

The BTC folks wouldn't like it but the other clones would love it. But none
have diplomats, soldiers or bureaucrats behind them as we know ;) and it would
be the minimum to at least move those crypto-currencies from "highly volatile
hot speculation item" to "desired usage in commercial transactions". Arbitrage
might do the rest? After all, intrinsically we know a BitCoin is not 4x as
"valuable" as a LiteCoin (or 44x as of right now) but roughly equivalent once
they're basketed and arbitraged.

But hey, it's late and my thinking is probably by far not as sound as that of
crypto-currency aficionados.

I love the idea in principle, but the world knows:

\- those who want a truly hard, non-dilutable unit (for _long-term_
preservation) have a better choice available that will survive whatever trends
the next years of techies pop out at an ever-increasing pace.

\- and those who want a "soft" unit for _mid/short-term_ transactions (before
it can possibly devalue substantially) have a unit that is backed by contract
law and your usage of it "defended" by, say, "the world" (if begrugdingly).

Don't get me wrong: I love all the buzz and biz around BTCs these last few
years. Truly I'm into what all the aficionados pull off, and whatever winnings
they "made". But not sure all "desires of human nature" from a either a
transactional-currency/medium-of-exchange or a long-range store-of-value are
truly reflected by the thing.

That said, it spawned useful technology even outside the realm of payments,
such as <http://dot-bit.org/Use_cases>

One could argue -- "the world has many fiat currencies in competition, why not
the same for digital crypto-currencies"? Hey, that's true! Actually that's
pretty neat. But as the LiteCoin example shows, dilution can "evolve" easily.
Not a problem as every party choose their currency of choice. But also
completely unnecessary, as the whole world could trade&exchange on seashells
tomorrow and no-one would be worse off. Different prices for the same products
exist throughout the Euro-zone depending on I guess a trazillion of unknown
factors, for example, and it works, so no biggie. Cool, let's have a hundred
competitors as only a handful of choices will likely gain long-term momentum.
And then everything changes with the next big crypto-3.0 thing in 2015 but
that don't need to phaze us as long as we cash out beforehand ;D

Hey, come to think of it... this LiteCoin could be something, I should invest!
This could be the "EUR" to the "USD", this could still be big! ;P

------
pfisch
This is a bad idea. Makes bitcoins seem less legitimate as a form of currency.

Also as far as I can tell this only helps out people mining coins, which is
not at all the purpose of these currencies.

~~~
kzrdude
how is bitcoin viable if it doesn't cope with competition?

~~~
tptacek
It's not, and it doesn't.

------
abrkn
If you're interested in obtaining some Litecoin, I've developed an open source
exchange. The exchange also issues LTC IOUs on Ripple for those on the
bleeding edge. <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174643>

~~~
GigabyteCoin
There is also btc-e.com and vircurex.com

------
jordanbaucke
Apply all your arguments 'for' or 'against' Litecoin and apply them to 'Gold'
vs. 'Silver'. Imagine if anyone would be willing to accept one versus the
other as a 'store of wealth' (gold/silver that is)

In the end, neither has any 'intrinsic value' in the modern age. Sure we can
'make things' out of gold/silver, but we can't eat it or shoot it at each
other: making it more or less as worthless. Yet people "expect" that neither
will be worthless in a breakdown of society.

In the end it's all human emotion. If Bitcoin is what they say it is ... than
why would it care about 'competition' - the gold in the ground doesn't.

~~~
dualogy
> Sure we can 'make things' out of gold/silver, but we can't eat it or shoot
> it at each other: making it more or less as worthless

Or---priceless! Hoarding them historically never (or hardly ever) interfered
with anyone's livelihood or industrial endeavours, yet because of their
arbitrary ("useless") nature could "absorb" / proxy per-unit any measure of
wealth applicable at a given time and place-----which is another valuable
property in addition to the usual "scarce, indestructable-but-divisible etc."
list of benefits.

------
Kiro
Time to start hoarding.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
The price already spiked last night and is beginning to drop again on
btc-e.com

------
a3voices
Mtgox, the most popular Bitcoin exchange site, plans on supporting Litecoin
soon[1]. Also interesting is that Litecoin now has a Wikipedia article[2]
dedicated to it.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/potent-ddos-
attacks-...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/potent-ddos-attacks-on-
mt-gox-delays-rollout-of-new-virtual-currency/)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litecoin>

edit: removed comment about Litecoin being the only other cryptocurrency with
a Wikipedia article

~~~
gus_massa
PPCoin: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPCoin>

~~~
GigabyteCoin
I am fairly certain they're adding "all" of the crypto currencies.

Litecoin, Namecoin, PPCoin, Terrracoin, etc...

