I would argue that Ethereum is where it's headed. Ethereum does everything that Litecoin/Bitcoin does along with a smart contract programming layer built into it, and a great team of incredibly smart people iterating on the platform.

Millions upon millions of dollars are being poured into companies built around Ethereum for a reason. If you look at the open positions for Consensys you can see just how many positions and projects one company has going on.

I would argue Monero is the first stop before the coins figure out a more environmentally friendly method, because the killer feature of a currency is anonymity.

I don't know much about ethereum though, does it offer anonymity functions of some sort?

Both environmental friendlyness and anonymity are on the roadmap.

Yes, in theory Ethereum is the better way. I was a strong believer in the "flippening" and exited some of my BTC position based on that belief.

But ... it may be a long time before that theoretical superiority translates to practical. Ethereum has been plagued by a hard fork and semi-regular thefts that exploit hard-to-write contracts, plus the Parity bug:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/with-...

None of this inspires confidence. Only after ETH can go for a while without these nightmares can it regain its well-deserved spot in the lead. (And imho that would involve a migration to a less error-prone language.)

The closest Bitcoin had was the database code in a client implementation that had to be fixed (and had major consensus).

Those aren't equivalent comparisons. The issues with Ethereum have all been with regards to implementations of applications on top of the ETH layer - parity bug and DAO hack being the two biggest. Neither was due to mistakes in the underlying Ethereum protocol, both had to do with something that someone made using Ethereum.

If I make a vulnerable website it's not nginx/Django/Postgres's fault.

The reason Ethereum hasn't taken over the dominant position yet probably has more to do with Bitcoin's superior brand penetration. Most Bitcoin holders that I know personally have very little actual understanding of how any of the crypto currencies work under the hood, so they follow the general sentiment of the community/press and do not invest based on technical merits.

The DAO hack itself wasn't the problem (in this context) -- the problem was having to deal with a network that does hard forks at a whim in a way deliberately constructed to favor a small group.

I agree that Parity was merely an application on top of ETH, but it was widely used and indicates that users can innocently get snagged by something like that.

>If I make a vulnerable website it's not nginx/Django/Postgres's fault.

If nginx/Django/postgres/PHP have defaults and syntax that make it extremely easy to open up vulnerabilities, then yes, that is a strike against them, and a valid reason to build on a less flaky platform or wait for them to iron that out.

>The reason Ethereum hasn't taken over the dominant position yet probably has more to do with Bitcoin's superior brand penetration.

Or they're people like me, who were excited, then saw the nasty warning signs.

Less not forget the competitors to Ethereum too, such as EOS or Cardano. These should provide better scalability.

There is a bunch of work happening with Ethereum to address the scalability problem, namely Proof of Stake and Sharding as well as complimentary systems like Raiden that use the main blockchain for dispute resolution and not every payment. I expect 2018 to be a busy year for Ethereum development!

Indeed. Same here. Either way competition will only make the cryptoassets and tools better.

As soon as I can experiment with programming an EOS or Cardano smart contract I'll be happy to comment on their viability, but as far as I can figure out you can't, or at least no one is doing it.

Ethereum has a working smart contract on the foundation website, as well as an online compiler to test with.

The EOS testnet launched last week. You can play with it using eos.js: https://github.com/eosio/eosjs

EOS looks like the most developer-friendly crypto I've seen. If you can write in a language that can compile to WebAssembly, then you can create a DApp on EOS.

No doubt about. Either way, the newcomers are bringing new ideas that can also make Ethereum improve.

Anything Ethereum does can be done as a Bitcoin sidechain.

Sure, it can even with the same Smart Contract as Ethereum using Counterparty.

It's just not done like that, or show me Bitcoin's Crowdfunding calendar, let me show you the hundreds there are for Ethereum...

Not to mention, both are doomed with very high fees.

I own both, but there are many improvements to go :)

But if Litecoin is more likely to be used as a currency wouldn’t that mean it would have to have no chance of appreciating with the same volatility that sent the price of Bitcoin to $20k?

Personally I don’t give a damn about which coin is the most practical currency, just show me which one is most likely to have a meteoric rise so I could throw a few bucks into it and pull out before it all goes bust.

At this point, it feels like investing in Penny stocks, just hotter.

although, to be fair, at least with penny stocks, they actually represent some companies whereas blockchain coins are more about a store of value and a bunch of other stuff

That ship has sailed. Save your money so you can afford a time machine. :)

But one to watch is https://www.telco.in/

I'm inclined to agree with you but I remember a ton of people saying the ship had sailed when BTC was at $2500 when I bought.

I certainly wish I can kept putting money into it instead of selling at $4k though.

I’m about to buy $15000 in Litecoin, we’ll see what happens.

Right after it tripled value? I’m geniunely interested in your thoughts on this.

I'm not OP but time in market beats timing the market. If there's a chance LTC goes 10x in the next few days or weeks or months, better to have bought now than trying to wait for a dip that may or may not arrive.

My thoughts are this is it, if this is going to take off this is where it all begins. I’m getting in now before it’s doubled by the end of the month.

If there is one thing the last 8 years have shown us - it doesn't matter at what point you get in.

But Litecoin in particular has had crazy corrections in the past. There are also many LTC hodlers from when it was pennies on the dollar who will now want out.

All of that is true of Bitcoin as well.

Litecoin has more potential for pumping though because it can be pitched as a better Bitcoin, which will cause a mania in the masses who missed out on Bitcoin the first time, leading to a much more powerful rise in price in a shorter period of time.

I’m telling you, this is it!

I'm surprised that of all the Altcoins that you could have picked, you chose litecoin as the one that is better than Bitcoin.

Litecoin has never been about actual utility or usage. It has always just been about being a store of value, and just copying every development from Bitcoin.

There are definitely altcoin that are different and interesting in meaningful ways. But not litecoin.

People don’t want a different or meaningful coin.

They just want a better Bitcoin.

People want a coin that can give them 1000x gains, the next iteration of "buying btc in 2010." Far < 1% of those people has ever used a cryptocurrency to make a purchase.

Related, but not directed at prev comment... If anyone actually cares about sound, uncensorable money, then they should look to the $300B network that has been battle tested and withstands constant attack. BTC has prioritized stability and security, and done very well in that regard. I understand that btc businesses, and the small minority that purchase from them, are frustrated that the digit cash use-case is more difficult right now. From my perspective though, the proven stability and security is far more valuable in the long run, and is something that other coins only talk about. I think btc has to go through a full financialization to complete its price discovery (eliminate the massive volatility) before any mass adoption of a cash use-case is practical. Luckily, futures and ETFs are incoming, and lightning network is testing on mainnet.

Why do you think Litecoin is more efficient?

Less fees, shorter confirmation times, etc.

Not for long. The creator has stated that they don't plan on increasing the blocksize.

They've swallowed the poison pill of "copying everything that the bitcoin core development team does", which means they hate low fees and on chain scaling just as much as the bitcoin community does.

I would encourage you to look into other alt coins for human to human value transport. My personal favorites are raiblocks and smartcash, but there are many others. Eth can even be used very effectively.

Litecoin has a cool name, a good position on the charts, and all of the same issues that bitcoin has.

Won't it be plagued by the same problems once the transaction numbers go high? It has 4x capacity, but I don't think that'll be enough for long.

Bitcoin had those things a year ago, too.

Bitcoin Cash scales far better than Litecoin.

Bitcoin Cash AKA ScamCoin

It's just Bitcoin with a bigger maximum block size setting. Don't see how that makes it a scam.