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Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

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Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#61

Post by oelmekki »

NamTaf wrote: post #15

It seems to me that this is still speculation based on the idea that increased exposure will increase investment in it which will drive the price higher to punters buy up LTC anticipating that it'll rise and thus it self-fulfils. I don't really see what fundamentals have changed to spur such a climb.

Actually, fundamentals radically changed.

Last year, litecoin was stilll "the first altcoin historically, which is just a duplicate of bitcoin and is mostly unmaintained". This year, it suddenly became bitcoin's staging area.

For those not aware, there's an ongoing heated debate in bitcoin about scalability issues that just seems to be unable to find consensus between several concurrent solution propositions. Litecoin came and implemented one, so we now can see how it performs. They are now moving on to implement lightning network, which is an other feature proposed for bitcoin for a long time. That being said, it will stop being "bitcoin's staging area" the minute bitcoin will go with an other choice that the one that was tested in litecoin. What litecoin would do? I don't see it asking miners to rollback a feature.

There's an other fundamental to consider : as for now, litecoin is more scalable than bitcoin. This means that should bitcoin fail spectacularly because of its scaling problems, litecoin would be the safe replacement choice, as it's exactly the same thing, but without scalability issues - due to mentioned features recent add. It would be a bit sad not to replace bitcoin with a more modern coin, like ethereum, but that's still something that could make litecoin relevant.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#62

Post by RandomInteger4 »

tuxracer wrote: post #22

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

World tensions are high. Apparently whenever there's bad news, the cryptocurrencies spike? It's kind of like a safety net similar to gold.

The current thing driving it might be a combination of factors, among which is the North Korea situation with chinese investors moving funds into cryptcurrencies?

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#63

Post by ganwar »

dvdhsu wrote: 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…

Iconomi does this already and much more.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#64

Post by runeks »

lend000 wrote: 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…

It should be noted that the Bitcoin protocol is more difficult to change, compared to other crypto currencies, simply because it's the most widely used. The more users/implementations a protocol has, the more expensive change will be, simply because it affects more users (more software needs to be rewritten).

Similarly, changing the SQL protocol is orders of magnitude more difficult than changing, say, the GraphQL protocol, but does that mean GraphQL is likely to take over SQL? Or is it just a symptom of the fact that SQL is more popular than GraphQL in the first place?

A crypto currency that no one uses is really easy to change, because no one will be affected. Framing this as a significant competitive advantage, however, misses the point, since the nimbleness is a direct result of no one using it.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#65

Post by [deleted] »

Svekax wrote: post #50
Taek wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This could not be further from the truth. If anybody else has the private keys to your coins, you don't own the coins. People have been burned by a countless number brokers. They will not leave their coins with a company such as this. Only the most unsophisticated investors leave their coins with brokers. Anybody knowledgeable enough to invest in multiple cryptocurrencies is smart enough to know they need complete co…

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#66

Post by nkuttler »

jpatokal wrote: post #56
Svekax wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could not be further from the truth. If anybody else has the private keys to your coins, you don't own the coins. People have been burned by a countless number brokers. They will not leave their coins with a company such as this. Only the most unsophisticated investors leave their coins with brokers. Anybody knowledgeable enough to invest in multiple cryptocurrencies is smart enough to know they need complete co…

Does your argument still apply if you change "coins" to "cash" and "brokers" to "banks"? I leave my fiat money in banks because I judge that the risk of the bank disappearing and taking my money with it is lower than the risk of my house getting burgled, catching fire, etc. Likewise, it's entirely reasonable to think that a competent Bitcoin broker is more secure and safe than my half-assed attempt to keep my own key…

> competent Bitcoin broker

That's the entire problem. Bitcoin has existed for eight years, and for a long time virtually nobody knew about it. Not a single bitcoin broker could demonstrate competency yet. It's better to stay out of this market if you think you can trust them.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#67

Post by runeks »

andy_ppp wrote: post #42
jerguismi wrote: post #17

Segregated witness should activate in litecoin in about ~6 days. http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php

What is this?

It's a protocol change that moves signature scripts out of the transaction itself, such that they are not included when calculating the hash/transaction ID of a transaction (a signature script contains both a signature plus additional data needed to fulfill a particular output script; only the additional data can the modified while keeping the signature valid). This is important because the signature script itself is unsigned data (a signature can't sign itself), which means that it's possible to change the signature script of a transaction, thus changing the transaction ID, and invalidating all transactions that pointed to the original transaction. This is colloquially referred to as "transaction malleability".

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#68

Post by patio11 »

dvdhsu wrote: 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…

You probably want to read on the difficulties facing the Winklevoss' proposed ETF for Bitcoin.

The MVP of your proposed idea is easy; the legal version is hard. If you do the MVP and don't put in an effort to get legal the happy case outcome is the SEC sends you a very annoyed letter and you shut down; there are a number of less-happy outcomes.

(If you're going to spend a few years getting intimately familiar with how to operate mutual funds writing software to do that might be more interesting than anything in crypto, since it doesn't require any speculation to envision a future where mutual funds run the world and are run on Excel spreadsheets and bubble gum.)

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#69

Post by runeks »

oelmekki wrote: post #61
NamTaf wrote: post #15

It seems to me that this is still speculation based on the idea that increased exposure will increase investment in it which will drive the price higher to punters buy up LTC anticipating that it'll rise and thus it self-fulfils. I don't really see what fundamentals have changed to spur such a climb.

Actually, fundamentals radically changed. Last year, litecoin was stilll "the first altcoin historically, which is just a duplicate of bitcoin and is mostly unmaintained". This year, it suddenly became bitcoin's staging area. For those not aware, there's an ongoing heated debate in bitcoin about scalability issues that just seems to be unable to find consensus between several concurrent solution propositions. Litecoi…

> Last year, litecoin was stilll "the first altcoin historically, which is just a duplicate of bitcoin and is mostly unmaintained". This year, it suddenly became bitcoin's staging area.

Bitcoin already has a staging area, called testnet3. The coins in this network are worthless.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#70

Post by chii »

runeks wrote: post #64
lend000 wrote: 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…

It should be noted that the Bitcoin protocol is more difficult to change, compared to other crypto currencies, simply because it's the most widely used. The more users/implementations a protocol has, the more expensive change will be, simply because it affects more users (more software needs to be rewritten). Similarly, changing the SQL protocol is orders of magnitude more difficult than changing, say, the GraphQL pr…

Sql is a bad example, because you don't have to follow the new sql standard if you choose not to. Your​ existing app will continue to work on existing databases that implement the old SQL standard.

A more salient example is the TCP/IP protocol! You cant juat update it, since it's required for everyone to agree on it!

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