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Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

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Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#121

Post by pmorici »

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…

Banks are insured By the fdic. There is no bitcoin custodian that has insurance that even comes close to what the fdic garuntees.

Done correctly you are absolutely better off with your btc stored at home

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#122

Post by joshuaswaney »

Cryptocurrency implementations have to make tradeoffs like any other type of software, and in this case we're looking at the tradeoff between transaction speed and security. Other cryptocurrencies favor anonymity over convenience. Is there a CAP theorem equivalent for these problems? There seems to be a healthy tension between scalability and security at the very least.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#123

Post by cableshaft »

About time. I've been waiting for an easy way to get Litecoin for so long. Every time I checked in the past, it seemed to require working with some Russian bank to get things set up, and something would always error out or "not be supported" or some crap and I'd eventually give up, like in the early days of bitcoin (if I had figured out how to successfully buy it I could have bought btc at $7 a coin once, and probably would have over 100 of them now).

Would have loved to have grabbed some LTC when it was dirt cheap, but I'll settle for getting in early on Coinbase. Did that shortly after Coinbase added Ethereum at $11, and it's now trading at $89.

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#124

Post by Uptrenda »

I never really got the appeal of Litecoin. It was basically just a copy and paste of Bitcoin with only minor alterations made to the source code (like changing the PoW for Script which never really defeated ASICs and a few other small changes.) It made no major innovations that can be named and even to this day it still lacks several of the major bug fixes that made it into Bitcoin (there are still patches missing from like ~2014 that result in the software being even harder to use for devs than Bitcoin.)

This is not coming from a Bitcoin Maximalist, by the way (not presently a fan of Bitcoin either.) Just thought I'd point out how bizarre it is that Litecoin even has a price at all when the software is functionally similar to Dogecoin. It's only real claim to fame is that it copy-pasted the code earlier than most other cryptocurrencies and hence now survives as a zombie currency backed by the souls of all the bag-holders foolish enough to invest in it (much like how Yahoo continues to survive to this day.)

Can we all just agree that Litecoin is a way over-hyped and silly excuse for a cryptocurrency? Silver to Bitcoin's gold? I can't think of a single problem that Litecoin actually solves compared to ... well, anything. At best: you could say its a speculative instrument tied to the cancerous block size debate. But other than that - is good marketing really worth the price of $21 USD a coin? I can see a lot of people getting screwed by this when the currency inevitably crashes again ...

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#125

Post by hultner »

VMG wrote: post #106
hultner wrote: post #101

Is Litecoin still gaining momentum at a significant pace? I'm not quite up to current developments in the crypto coin communities, however my perception from the outside is that Ethereum has replaced Litecoin as the leading altcoin. Is this incorrect? How well does Litecoin fare against the congestion problems we've heard about from the Bitcoin communities?

You can't rank altcoins by market cap, it's a very flawed indicator. Unlike Bitcoin, none of the Altcoins currently have any use outside speculation, including Ethereum. There is significant skepticism that Ethereum could deliver on it's promises if it was widely used. Litecoin is an almost identical clone of Bitcoin. The network recently decided to implement a change (called SegWit) that will help with scalability (…

Makes me curious. If not by market cap, how would you rank them?

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#126

Post by jesusthatsgreat »

developer2 wrote: post #98
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…

The way people are treating cryptocurrency exchanges makes absolutely no sense to me. Most people are buying into it because they are absolutely certain they will manage to cash out once the currency hits an extreme "all time high". When such a peak occurs whereby the top 1% - as determined by number of coins owned - cashes out, everyone else who jumped on the bandwagon thinking they would also cash out is going to b…

If you can spend cryptocurrency (you can now spend it through debit cards and it's more becoming more widely accepted at online retailers) and you know it's deflationary, why would you ever want to cash out in to fiat?

Even if 5% of all Bitcoin are dumped on to an exchange / multiple exchanges, it would cause short term panic but you'd still end up with sellers buying back in at lower prices because of the fixed supply. And let's face it, if you're smart enough to create blockchain technology / Bitcoin, you're probably smart enough not to sell your entire portfolio in one swoop on an open market without communicating with anyone...

The current bubble will come to an end and we'll enter a bear cycle at some stage - it's a given... but it's pretty unlikely the technology will just go away and fade in to oblivion given the number of people working with it and potential (or in some cases realised) use cases.

Is about as disruptive a technology as there has been since the internet itself - so if you're waiting for it to fall apart I think you'll be waiting longer than you realise...

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#127

Post by bhaak »

developer2 wrote: post #117
bhaak wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's be absolutely clear: your coins are only worth what someone is willing to pay. And when the one and only true "run on the bank" of one of these currencies happens, it will happen within the span of less than an hour. All these people who are buying to eventually cash out are going to blink and wonder what the hell happened. That's not so different than what can happen in real life with currencies, isn't it? S…

>> he/she/them are dead or lost the keys to their private wallet[...] the minute this coins move, the price will plummet. And you can be sure that many people are watching these coins, a move will be noticed. Immediately. This aspect of BTC specifically makes me roar with laughter. The fact that anyone is willing to hope that Nakamoto's coins are "lost", discounting their very real value should he/she be sitting on t…

It would be a great con, indeed. Going into hiding for 7 years so far, at a time when Bitcoin wasn't worth much, hoping that in time it will grow in value.

But tell me how to cash out any of those bitcoins that are supposed to be Satoshis without crashing the price? Just because it's on the blockchain doesn't mean anything as that only shows that those coins have changed ownership. They haven't been converted to fiat at that time.

Being able to sell on exchanges usually takes a few confirmations and by then, enough people will have heard the news of the coins moving and the price will already have plummeted significantly. Sure, those old coins would still be worth something but the actual monetary gain would be much less and Bitcoin itself might not survive such an event.

You could of course trade those coins over the counter, just sell the private keys or another method of an off-chain transaction but that still leaves the issue on how to cash out eventually?

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#129

Post by durango »

wslh wrote: post #109
benedictlewis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work with GABI [0] who operate a regulated Bitcoin fund based out of Jersey. They also operate XBT Provider [1], which offers BTC exposure through COINXBT [2] on NASDAQ. If you're genuinely interested in setting up a cryptocurrency ETF, either Jersey or Sweden both have a solid legal foundation. [0] http://globaladvisors.co.uk/ [1] http://xbtprovider.com [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/COINXBT:SS

As part of the YC Startup School we are working on an API which supports multiple cryptocurrencies and tokens, including gathering blockchain metrics. Is this something you might be interested in?

This is something that I would be interested in but for different purposes altogether. Anyway to sign up for a newsletter/waiting list?

Re: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

#130

Post by philbarr »

developer2 wrote: post #117
bhaak wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's be absolutely clear: your coins are only worth what someone is willing to pay. And when the one and only true "run on the bank" of one of these currencies happens, it will happen within the span of less than an hour. All these people who are buying to eventually cash out are going to blink and wonder what the hell happened. That's not so different than what can happen in real life with currencies, isn't it? S…

>> he/she/them are dead or lost the keys to their private wallet[...] the minute this coins move, the price will plummet. And you can be sure that many people are watching these coins, a move will be noticed. Immediately. This aspect of BTC specifically makes me roar with laughter. The fact that anyone is willing to hope that Nakamoto's coins are "lost", discounting their very real value should he/she be sitting on t…

Ok - so I know nothing about investing, so genuine question: isn't that the time to buy?
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