I love how people say Litecoin has a "lack of innovation" and then in the same breath would hail Bitcoin for its innovation. They deride Litecoin for not being accepted very many places, where a year ago Bitcoin could barely be spent anywhere, either.

Are gimmicks what we really want in a coin? Or do we want security, liquidity, adoption and dependability? Because the market is FLOODED with gimmicks that only end up serving as a story for pumpers & dumpers to sell people on, jacking up the price until it gets annihilated by the whales who pumped it. All you need is a good story. Auroracoin had a good story and it attracted the idealists in droves. People were claiming it was going to overtake Bitcoin, when it temporarily exceeded Litecoin's market cap. Then it got slapped into the dirt...as predicted. Right now, the new "story" coin is Darkcoin. Unfortunately, its innovation is something that will prevent it from ever seeing widespread adoption and the fact is, the segment of the population it SHOULD attract - the TOR underground - has no interest in it. So the support is not there for its current price; hence, it's a pump waiting to be dumped.

Litecoin, right now, is almost exactly where Bitcoin was at the beginning of 2013 when the first ASIC hardware started shipping for it. It was at about $14 to start 2013. The only real difference is, Litecoin isn't being used to conduct black market business on TOR. But the fact that we're about to see hundreds of millions of dollars poured into dedicated ASIC hardware infrastructure for Litecoin tells me that it isn't "dying a slow death," but has been given a substantial vote of confidence...one which can potentially attract the kind of attention to it in terms of business development and venture capital in 2015 and beyond, that Bitcoin has begun enjoying this year.

All other digital currencies are fighting for table scraps, right now...and it's going to take more than just gimmicks to change that.

Honestly, haven't we seen Bitcoin declared dead enough times to know better than to do this with Litecoin? Don't be distracted by the fact that there are 200+ altcoins out there scrambling for attention...it hasn't changed Litecoin's position in the market, at all.

Sometimes I think people mistakenly judge a coin's success by how vocal or active the social media "communities" in support of them are...and that's a fallacy. Personally, I care where the money is going...and the money is going into Litecoin, right now.

As ever, for me, the motivation to be in Litecoin 50/50 with Bitcoin is simple...Charles Lee and Warren Togami are public figures who aren't sitting on a million inactive coin that they could potentially demolish the market with on a whim. Nobody really knows who Satoshi is, but he's an eccentric recluse who's got a million Bitcoin to his name and if he decided to end his experiment, he easily could destroy every bit of confidence anyone has in Bitcoin by dumping it all at once. This, to me, is Bitcoin's biggest weakness.