I love how people say Litecoin has a "lack of innovation" and then in the same breath would hail Bitcoin for its innovation.
Are you kidding me? Bitcoin was the first crypto currency, it is innovation at its finest. Sure, money in itself is not innovative, but a decentralized psuedo anonymous currency was certainly innovative. They continue to improve upon Bitcoin and add new features, improving on the original innovation, which is why I would still call it innovative. My grudge with Litecoin is that they simply copy those features.
They deride Litecoin for not being accepted very many places, where a year ago Bitcoin could barely be spent anywhere, either.
I think Litecoin is actually accepted at a lot of places, but if it weren't number 2 on the market cap list, I don't think this would be true. Businesses go after where the money is, as they are in the business of making money.
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.
There's a big difference in between gimmicks and innovation. I agree that most of the "innovative" alternative coins that have come out have been mainly gimmicky and only made small changes, however there are some truly innovative ones out there as well. I think to brush everything off as a gimmick is a mistake. I agree Auroracoin was somewhat of a gimmick, but it was also innovative in the fact that no one had distributed a crypto currency like that before. Just because something is innovative doesn't mean I would think it is a good investment, and that is usually in the case of the innovation(s) being a gimmick. I don't think anyone actually thought Aurora Coin would overtake Bitcoin. The most vocal supporters of the gimmicky pump and dump coins, are usually people trying to pump up the price so that they can dump them, and it is hardly a shared community sentiment.
There are many non nefarious reasons someone would want privacy. For example, the want to stop the NSA, CIA, and Corporations (etcetera) intercepting and studying our data. Pretty much everything from what we look at on the internet, where we go, what we do, what we like, what we don't like, and reading private communications. The list goes on and an and I think in this day and age (thanks Snowden) people are more aware of the need for privacy. The TOR underground is understanbly a bit comprehensive to start using new technologies.. who knows who developed them and what their purposes were for doing so. There could very well be a back door to the CIA, admittedly that is unlikely but when you're selling drugs would you really want to take chances like this? They will eventually move over to something more private and anonymous, but it is too early to make that transition.
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.
Just because difficulty goes up it does not mean that price will follow, and the "all other digital currencies are fighting for table scraps" goes along with the "too big to fail" mantra that I don't believe applies to crypto coins- or anything for that matter.
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.
It's mostly crazys and stupids that have called Bitcoin dead in the past. They don't understand that crypto currencies are a movement, and Bitcoin is at the forefront of this movement. It will likely stay there for some time. I don't think these people understand the network effect, something which is more applicable to Bitcoin than Litecoin. You can't kill movements, especially political, human rights, and religious ones. I feel crypto currencies are a political and human rights movement wrapped into one in the form of currency.
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.
The money WAS going into Litecoin. It has been on a steady decline for the past 6 months, the same amount of Litecoins today can only buy you half as many Bitcoins s they could 6 months ago. What you are seeing is the result of Litecoin being on top for so long and the natural choice to be the #2 crypto currency. That choice is not so clear cut anymore, and for some like me it is not even a hard decision.
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.
Mark my words, Satoshi will never dump his coins. This is because for Satoshi, Bitcoin is more of a political and human rights movement in the form of a currency. Satoshi empowered this movement through the one thing most people care about most in this world- money. Bitcoin is just Satoshi's soap box.