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Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

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Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#71

Post by oelmekki »

nnfy wrote: post #2

Would a vendor like coinbase be subject to any legal repercussions if its employees purchased litecoin before the option to purchase went live, and the price spiked?

I hope not for them, because there clearly was insider news at play, here.

While litecoin was rising in previous months and its coinbase addition has been rumored, technical analysis two days ago shown compression and it was not expected to have any big move before tomorrow. Then, out of nowhere, ltc spiked, yesterday. 3 hours later, it was announced that litecoin was being added on coinbase.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#72

Post by Svekax »

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…

Bitcoin theft from brokers and outside sources has been a big issue over the years. It's universally accepted that the only responsible practice is to transfer funds from brokers and not share your private keys.

I can now tell you don't own and know nothing about Bitcoin. This discussion is pointless and has now ended.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#73

Post by Taek »

flashmob wrote: post #45
Taek wrote: 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,…

> Bitcoin has by far the greatest amount of research and intellectual effort driving it It's not like the research is exclusive. Note that any research done on bitcoin can also be shared and used on other projects. Litecoin for example, which is a fork of bitcoin, is now benefiting from bitcoin's R&D by using Segwit first. Likewise, other blockchains can teach a lesson for bitcoin. For example sha256 proved not to be…

> For example sha256 proved not to be a good hashing algo because the reliance on ASICs, which centralizes mining. Another important area in research is the development of other greener forms of blockchain security such as Proof of Stake, which will most likely replace Proof Of Work once perfected.

Theoretically speaking all algorithms are able to be optimized by ASICs. ASIC resistance is not about making ASICs impossible, it's about making them expensive. But any secure global PoW currency is going to have enough mining reward to drive ASIC development.

The really ASIC resistant algorithms will have an R&D overhead of hundreds of millions. Which means if one player can get in really and keep their R&D secret or patented, they can amortize costs and more easily block newcomers. Overall, even without intentional barriers, you will have a much more centralized coin in the long run.

For any coin intending to become worth billions or trillions, you really want to embrace ASICs and design a PoW that makes it as easy as possible for newcomers to profitably develop and manufacture ASICs.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#74

Post by massaman_yams »

Svekax wrote: post #36
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…

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?

This is a line of thinking akin to goldbuggery in the traditional investing world; it's the same kind of mindset that leads to cash stuffed underneath mattresses and basements full of nonperishable goods. It is, in a word, paranoid, and doesn't represent a balanced assessment of risk factors.

Granted, risk is higher with cryptocurrency given its infancy; I won't dispute that. But if we trust brick & mortar banks to have adequate security policies and practices to deal with fiat currency, then the amount of trust we need to place in a competent exchange isn't multiple orders of magnitude higher than that. Just as there are security policies to mitigate risk in the world of cash, so are there policies to mitigate risk in the cryptocurrency world.

Maybe the risk with an exchange is one order of magnitude higher at the moment vs fiat; that seems like a reasonable amount. But 2-3+? No, particularly given the risks already present for fiat currency. And while we're at it, consider hardware failure risk if you're storing your own wallet files. What's an average failure rate for a storage device per year? 1-3%? Great, I'm sure you have backups. Not every user can be bothered, but any competent exchange will. Or - on the crypto side - what amount of value would be at risk due to an event like a hard fork? That's a risk at the currency level, not at the wallet/key level.

The overwhelming majority of businesses don't live or die based on the opinions of the paranoid; they succeed or fail based on the opinions of the average customer.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#75

Post by rgbrgb »

patio11 wrote: post #68
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 ho…

It would be cool to do it in such a way that you ship the crypto "fund" as a binary that users run on their own server, kind of like a smart wallet. The program would make automatic trades to rebalance some BTC you initially deposit. You could "withdraw" BTC with a sale (implementation detail) whenever you wanted. I wouldn't think there would be legal requirements there.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#78

Post by Svekax »

nkuttler wrote: post #66
jpatokal wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

#79

Post by ForHackernews »

tuxracer wrote: post #22

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

Almost nobody (except criminals) actually uses any of these purported currencies to exchange for goods & services. They behave as speculative investments, so they're prone to the same kind of price swings and overheated group-think as other such assets.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#80

Post by sanswork »

charsifood wrote: post #35
bitcoinstudent wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (+…

You can't judge any cryptocurrency by the number of stores that accept it because they all fail at that. Go to any random city and you can probably count the number of locations that take bitcoin on one hand and half of those probably haven't done a transaction in so long that they won't remember how to do it.
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