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Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

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31–40 of 257 posts

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#31
post #23

Is there interest in a cryptocurrency index fund? The idea is you could just buy an index fund composed of, say, 50% BTC, 20% ETH, 15% LTC and 15% ZEC. I'm fairly certain that one of these cryptocurrencies will 10 or 100x in value over the next 5 years, but buying each one individually is just such a pain. Would you invest? In reality, we'd probably buy the top 10 coins weighted according to some measure, and rebalan…

Buying 4 isn't too hard.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#32
post #21
post #10

It will take significant time and effort to overtake Bitcoin's name recognition and first mover advantage. However, there's also an advantage to being a second mover that can adapt quickly to a changing environment... I doubt Bitcoin will be the supreme crypto-currency in a few years. It's just too implausible that Bitcoin is perfect enough as is, and/or the community will be able to implement any needed changes befo…

Bitcoin doesn't need to be perfect to remain #1. Just needs to be good enough.

I don't think that's really true... it was true for things like TCP, http, and email, which had massive network effects and little competition at their start. But Bitcoin is already only 60% of the total market cap of all cryptos. While bitcoin was already a monopoly, Ethereum came from nowhere to become 1/3 its size (and growing). "Good enough" is not good enough here. Competition is alive and well. Without active development, it will stagnate. We've already seen that start.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#33
post #18
post #10

It will take significant time and effort to overtake Bitcoin's name recognition and first mover advantage. However, there's also an advantage to being a second mover that can adapt quickly to a changing environment... I doubt Bitcoin will be the supreme crypto-currency in a few years. It's just too implausible that Bitcoin is perfect enough as is, and/or the community will be able to implement any needed changes befo…

Agreed on bitcoin not being the perfect solution for crypto. I think Ethereum has a ton of potential in this regard. Smart contracts have many applications and provided the developer community around Ethereum continues growing, I see no reason why it won't overtake Bitcoin within the next 10 years.

All this smart contract talk makes me somewhat sceptical. There have been a lot of talk about code replacing lawyers for years now, I still see very little of that actually happening. Can you name any cool smart contract use cases?

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#34
post #23

Is there interest in a cryptocurrency index fund? The idea is you could just buy an index fund composed of, say, 50% BTC, 20% ETH, 15% LTC and 15% ZEC. I'm fairly certain that one of these cryptocurrencies will 10 or 100x in value over the next 5 years, but buying each one individually is just such a pain. Would you invest? In reality, we'd probably buy the top 10 coins weighted according to some measure, and rebalan…

Haven't tried it but Coincube seems to do this already: https://beta.coincube.io/indexes

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#35
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin doesn't need to be perfect to remain #1. Just needs to be good enough.

I don't think that's really true... it was true for things like TCP, http, and email, which had massive network effects and little competition at their start. But Bitcoin is already only 60% of the total market cap of all cryptos. While bitcoin was already a monopoly, Ethereum came from nowhere to become 1/3 its size (and growing). "Good enough" is not good enough here. Competition is alive and well. Without active d…

How much of ETH's price is propped up by speculation?

I don't know of any stores that take ETH, while plenty take BTC. BTC also completely runs the economy of the DarkNet.

I believe all cryptocurrencies are somewhat propped up by speculation, but BTC is still the preferred currency for the vast majority of people using cryptocurrencies for the actual exchange of goods and services. That's how BTC derives its value (+ speculation, but very few people are willing to speculate at $1500 USD per coin).

As for the other cryptocurrencies, I would say that a lot of their value comes from people wishing to get in on the next "BTC" for $20-$80/coin.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#36
post #23

Is there interest in a cryptocurrency index fund? The idea is you could just buy an index fund composed of, say, 50% BTC, 20% ETH, 15% LTC and 15% ZEC. I'm fairly certain that one of these cryptocurrencies will 10 or 100x in value over the next 5 years, but buying each one individually is just such a pain. Would you invest? In reality, we'd probably buy the top 10 coins weighted according to some measure, and rebalan…

This is a bad idea. When you're buying a cryptocurrency, you're purchasing trust. Leaving your cryptocurrency with a third party undermines this. Any business idea based on people leaving cryptocurrency with a third party is doomed. Instead, why not tackle the reasons why buying those cryptocurrencies are difficult?

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#37
post #36
post #23

Is there interest in a cryptocurrency index fund? The idea is you could just buy an index fund composed of, say, 50% BTC, 20% ETH, 15% LTC and 15% ZEC. I'm fairly certain that one of these cryptocurrencies will 10 or 100x in value over the next 5 years, but buying each one individually is just such a pain. Would you invest? In reality, we'd probably buy the top 10 coins weighted according to some measure, and rebalan…

This is a bad idea. When you're buying a cryptocurrency, you're purchasing trust. Leaving your cryptocurrency with a third party undermines this. Any business idea based on people leaving cryptocurrency with a third party is doomed. Instead, why not tackle the reasons why buying those cryptocurrencies are difficult?

If you are buying to speculate perhaps your concern is not the features of the currency but rather the profit potential. You might be perfectly content trusting a third party.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#38
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has by far the greatest amount of research and intellectual effort driving it, and it's far from a static protocol. It doesn't need to have gotten everything perfect, it needs to change just quickly (or slowly) enough to retain its core value proposition vs. other cryptocurrencies. Maybe it will get replaced, maybe not. But there's no question to me that Bitcoin is by far the most decentralized, most secure,…

I would like to hear your opinion why you think Bitcoin is more secure than Ethereum.

For example they had that bug last year where somebody was able to steal 50 million dollars equivalent ether from the network. IIRC that caused one of the hard forks and is the reason there are now both eth and etc. That was a bug in the DAO protocol. I'm not aware of any bugs in the btc protocol to allow hackers to steal money in their entire 8 years existence

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#39

Is there a reason a lot of these cryptocurrencies have suddenly started to skyrocket all at once?

Network effects of people who held one that skyrocketed then diversifying into others and news around any given one skyrocketing drawing people to the space in general.

Not to mention that every single one is an experiment that feeds back into the collective knowledge of what makes a good cryptocurrency, even as any individual one can only choose a single set of all the known tradeoffs.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#40
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has by far the greatest amount of research and intellectual effort driving it, and it's far from a static protocol. It doesn't need to have gotten everything perfect, it needs to change just quickly (or slowly) enough to retain its core value proposition vs. other cryptocurrencies. Maybe it will get replaced, maybe not. But there's no question to me that Bitcoin is by far the most decentralized, most secure,…

I would like to hear your opinion why you think Bitcoin is more secure than Ethereum.

Bitcoin has never done a forcible hard fork, reversing legitimate transactions, to protect the financial interests of the developers.
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