Why Litecoin is dying!

24 HOUR PREDICTION CHALLENGE.

Comment on this blog post to predict the price of litecoin in the next 24 hours. Happy speculation!

NOTE: I will upvote all comments.

WHY?

Litecoin has officially decoupled from bitcoin. While bitcoin jumped in price following the USMS auction litecoin is still going down in price. As of 7/2/14 litecoin is currently worth $7.79 on BTC-E. Lets take a look at the latest chart from BTC-E:

As we can see here someone lucky was able to score a $2 Litecoin. The price rebounded right away however the downtrend still persists. What is causing that? Why is Litecoin dying?

UPDATE: 40k LTC dump on OKCoin

This is a big hit for litecoin. It will bring it down quite a bit but hopefully it will be able to rebound.

Analyze Litecoin

So why litecoin is dying? Lets first analyze Litecoin. It is different from Bitcoin in 3 major ways. It runs under a different algorithm, the block speed is much faster, but the network power is not as strong as the one of bitcoin. Back in the good ol days Litecoin was peaking at $45, but what happened now? The simplest explanation is that the hype died. Litecoin was hyped to be ASIC resistant with it’s Scrypt mining algorithm and because the confirmation arrive much faster it seemed like an improvement upon bitcoin. However, we have since seen the release of the GridSeed which is an ASIC miner for litecoin. The release of the ASIC miner ruins the hype that litecoin is in fact ASIC resistant because GridSeed proves otherwise.

The other hype that surrounded litecoin was it’s faster transaction speeds and how it must be a better network. Wrong, just because a block can be solved faster and the confirmations arrive faster does not mean that the network is faster. Think of it this way, litecoin’s blocks take 2.5 minutes to be solved on average, and bitcoin blocks take 10 minutes to be solved. So in other words, 4 litecoin confirmations = 1 bitcoin confirmation security wise. So just because a confirmation arrived earlier does not mean that the transaction is just as secure as that of a longer arriving confirmation (hope that made sense).

So since litecoin is not asic proof and faster transaction speeds do not equal the same security, the hype has died. There is no real use for litecoin now because it is just another version of bitcoin with a few differences. It falls in the category of all the other litecoins which do not have any significant difference or improvements.

The other side

There is always another side to the argument. Some people do not think that litecoin is dying but that it is simply going through a “growing phase” just like bitcoin did. Here is what kodofodder has to say from reddit:

We should also point out the gains LTC % wise out paced the gains BTC made % wise…at the peak of the bubble. Litecoin is also going through a growing phase the Bitcoin had to go through as well…..ASIC development. So really, not that huge of a difference 🙂

Maybe the development of stronger and more powerful ASICs will raise the price of litecoin, or maybe bitcoin’s algorithm will be compromised and litecoin’s Scrypt will be proven to be more secure. However, right now the market is not looking very good and if you are holding litecoin i wish you all the best.

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