Quote from: ericycle on August 14, 2019, 06:36:24 PM

I'm really trying to understand, nothing more.

Litecoin seems a lot faster with much lower fees. Shouldn't it then be more popular than Bitcoin? What are the big advantages of Bitcoin despite these 2 big drawbacks?

Litecoin is designed to be faster. It processes transactions every 2.5 minutes. It has more capacity but more importantly in terms of fees its chain has zero pressure on it. Not enough people are using it.

Bitcoin is used by more people and it has less room. Why do more people use and want it? Because it has earned the most trust and that's why it's the most valuable and in demand coin of the lot. It's the oldest, most battered, most tested and most decentralised.

A cryptocurrency without trust is worthless. That's the only basis for the value of any of them. None of them are anything more than a few bits of code flying around the internet. What gives any of them value is the belief enough people have that they're worth something. That can't be programmed, faked, bought or summoned from thin air. It takes years and years of grind.

If it was purely down to speed and fees then almost every other coin is faster and less costly to transact. That doesn't mean they have any future.

If I produced a coin today that could do instant and free transactions it would be roundly ignored. No one would want it because it hasn't earned their trust.

Bitcoin's prime reason for existence is to be free from the meddling of middlemen. It's open to all and verifiable to all. That means millions of people and machines are working to keep it that way. That inevitably has a cost in terms of wieldiness compared to one company operating off its own database permitting you to access it on their terms.