Quote from: gst on April 27, 2013, 04:42:01 PM

I'm not holding crypto-currencies because I'm investing, but because I think they're a good idea to conduct transactions over the internet. I bought a set of such currencies (Bitcoins, Litecoins) a long time before all of the hype (see the creation date of my user account, started buying Bitcoins well before I created the account) and I didn't really expect them to rise in value that much. "Investing" in currencies is just stupid, because that's basically a Ponzi-scheme. That's even true for Bitcoin to a given degree now, but at least there you have actual usage of the protocol to offset the speculation. If you want to "invest" in something invest in Bitcoin/Litecoin related companies instead of bubbles.

It's speculation. Pick literally anything. Someone, somewhere at some point in time has used or tried to use it for speculative purposes. It's also no more of a ponzi than holding any other asset before bigger amounts of capital inflow rushes in. As for bubbles, in any market, there will always be bubbles.

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That's only a very temporary advantage. While Scrypt has the advantage that it is "memory-hard", technology changes still have the same effect on Litecoin as on Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies). Once ASICs are the primary hashing technology in the Bitcoin world it's hard for adversaries to come up with more effective solutions (unless they can spend lots of energy). (...) And the attack described by you above would also be possible against Scrypt, as you could use a Botnet instead of an ASIC for this. OTOH, once ASICs are the standard in the Bitcoin world Botnet attacks aren't feasible at all, as the hashing rate that can be reached with them is much lower than what a few ASICs deliver.

Asic (and whatever new other viable methods of mining that might surface) miners will be heavily commoditized. You wont be able to use botnets to 51% the network anymore (atleast until everyone and their mother has an asic in the future), but you will have even fewer individuals/entities controlling a bigger % of the total network hashrate....which is obviously not really that good of a thing if you give it some actual thought.
(if scrypt custom hardware resistance holds) It essentially boils down to a higher network hashrate at the hands of a few vs a more widely distributed, but somewhat lower network hashrate.

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With Scrypt on the other hand you'll be facing the same problems, but just at a later time.

So instead we should make no attempt ever at fixing anything, no matter how broken it might be? Ok.

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Visa and Mastercard are different technologies, but they still use a commonly agreed on currency. You already have that in the Bitcoin world: A common currency and dozens of different client implementations. You don't have that in the Litecoin world - there you can only choose one from two outdated and unmaintained clients.

Dont fix it if it's not broken.

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Waiting for 6 transactions (or whatever) is just an arbitrary number. You correctly noticed that the same transaction amount for Litecoins is less secure than for Bitcoins. So why not just wait for less transactions when using Bitcoins?

It's more complex than that. i have not sanity checked this at all, but it might be somewhat helpful in clarifying that.

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The only reason why the community grows is because previous Bitcoin miners find out that there equipment is suddenly useless and therefore try to earn money with Litecoins instead. The fallacy here is that miners don't really matter much when it comes to the utility of a currency. The community that would need to grow are the actual users conducting transactions via Litecoin and this community is still extremely tiny.

1) If someone is pushed out from somewhere, they will take their things and partially or otherwise move on to greener ($$) pastures if they think that's in their interest. Your point being?
2) What fallacy?
3) For the time being, i believe thepiratebay frontpage is "mainstream" enough Wink

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So you say that Litecoin is a classical bubble? People just buy it because they assume that its value will rise?

So instead people should buy something if they think the price will drop? Sounds like a very interesting concept...you should patent it.

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The exchange rate is just an arbitrary number and doesn't affect real-life utility. The Zimbabwean dollar is not a better currency than the US dollar, just because you need billions of them in your pocket to buy a breakfast. But if there's really a psychological reason behind this it might be time for the Bitcoin community to switch to mBTC or all the way to Satoshis as currency unit.

??
Non sequitur.

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In practice (if you look at the source code) Litecoin is basically a copy of an old Bitcoin version and has not been updated for a very long time. In other words: Almost all of the attacks applicable against Bitcoin are also applicable against Litecoin. In addition, all the security issues that have been long fixed in the Bitcoin have been mostly ignored by Litecoin (so Litecoin is still vulnerable to them). Litecoin users are claiming that Litecoin is "more modern" than Bitcoin, but the truth is that it is basically outdated and unmaintained.

Dont fix it if it's not broken. Or at the very least not until you know you wont break it more *cough*hardfork*cough*. it tends to help with building confidence Wink

Quote from: samson on April 27, 2013, 10:52:36 PM

Litecoin is being pumped at the moment.

Whoever is doing this will do it to PPCoin one day too. They are already controlling the prices with bots on the exchanges.

as if bitcoin was/is any different Roll Eyes