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Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

• nnfy 9y ago
  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?
  • otos 9y ago
    Charlie Lee has mentioned it coming a month or so ago. And a week or two ago posted an image of an internal Coinbase version with Litecoin available.
  • appetizer 9y ago
    No, winning from having a privileged place in society is only prohibited in the securities market. And only kind of, and only in America for the most part, and only for now with the new court Other markets that arent securities have no prohibition on privilege. Cryptocurrencies arent securities, although some ICOs could be determined to be securities, retroactively, so trade on inside information with that in mind The stock market regulations are primarily a charade so that unprivileged people feel confident enough to put their money in a nonseasonal and liquid market. At the time, perpetual stock companies were the only ones that fit, compared to commodities currencies and real estate, so it has to appear more fair.
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • goodside 9y ago
    Insider trading laws are for stocks. If you somehow know in advance that a currency or a commodity is going to spike in price, you're free to hoard as much of it as you like. It's debatable which one of those two a cryptocurrency is, but it's definitely not equity.
  • tudorconstantin 9y ago
    Even if it was, I wonder how one could be caught doing that? They can buy BTC, then exchange them for LTC in a non US based exchange and do the reverse for cashing out the profits. Eventually tumble them in the process for more obfuscation.
  • richardw 9y ago
    Suggest not downvoting parent. Seems a valid question, had valid answers.
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • oelmekki 9y ago
    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.
    • oelmekki 9y ago
      Btw, I'm only in trading since cryptos and don't know classic markets, I would love someone to explain to me why using insider news is a crime. The thing is, it only seems fair to me to be able to exploit insider news. Employees from a company are not affected by stock price change, at least not in a good way ; because when stocks go the wrong way, they'll certainly feel it by being asked more for less in their work. So it seems only fair that someone working in a company could benefit from knowing what is going on there : they would have a part of the pie, for once.
      • iopq 9y ago
        At the same time, if all employees knew bad news and dumped all of their stock at the same time, the rest of us would be left holding bags.
        • oelmekki 9y ago
          And then, they would be asked to work longer hours and accept salary cuts to make market confident again :) Not sure it would work in that direction, I don't think most people would intentionally deteriorate the company they work for.
          • iopq 9y ago
            No, they would execute their options/sell their stock and then get laid off.
            • 9y ago
• sxp 9y ago
  I wonder if the sudden increase in price over April is related to to Coinbase buying up LTC to fill their reserves: http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/litecoin/ http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/litecoin/
• ptenk 9y ago
  This rise is driven by Coinbase alone. The premium there was like 30-40% to other exchanges at one point.
  • koudelka 9y ago
    Not so, Segregated Witness adoption pushed it from $4 to about $15.
  • gragas 9y ago
    The whole Bitfinex scandal could have contributed to the rise as well. Bitfinex was one of the largest exchanges, but now no one (except people with Taiwanese bank accounts) can wire fiat out. Suddenly, traders are pouring out of Bitfinex and into the next best place---Coinbase, where trading on margin is free. Really, the only reason not to use Coinbase right now is if you think that US banks will "crack down" on them as well and not accept any transfers out.
• danielleheong 9y ago
  So little activity until 1st of April. What gives... https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/litecoin/btc/90_days https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/litecoin/btc/90_da...
  • bitcoinstudent 9y ago
    Litecoin founder came back and started working on SegWit.
    • odrekf 9y ago
      "Litecoin founder" Funny how people get pride from copy/pasting Bitcoin's code.
• lend000 9y ago
  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 before its "competitors" take market share. Regardless, it's a good time to be a cryptocurrency investor. We're still in 1996 in Dot Com Bubble time.
  • appetizer 9y ago
    Name recognition lol, there's a significant advantage to not being called bitcoin.
  • agandy 9y ago
    Agreed on bitcoin not being the perfect solution for crypto. I think Ethereum has a ton of potential in this regard. Smart contracts have many applications and provided the developer community around Ethereum continues growing, I see no reason why it won't overtake Bitcoin within the next 10 years.
    • repomies6991 9y ago
      All this smart contract talk makes me somewhat sceptical. There have been a lot of talk about code replacing lawyers for years now, I still see very little of that actually happening. Can you name any cool smart contract use cases?
      • darkFunction 9y ago
        The problem with smart contracts is that of defining trustless "oracles", or, how do you get data in and out of the network without relying on vulnerable points of centralisation. As soon as you require information about something other than the internal state of the chain, you have a problem. I believe some companies are attempting to implement solutions at the moment but I'm not familiar with the technology. Crowd-funding is an already popular use case for blockchain contracts, as well as the creation of tradable tokens built on top of the platform. Decentralised exchanges are a nice idea but to my knowledge they are outclassed by the speed of centralised servers. Decentralised, "fair" casinos (such as Edgeless) are also possible with smart contracts but I think they won't be able to compete with traditional casinos that have an edge but offer large and enticing welcome bonuses. For a quick overview of some of Ethereum's Dapps you can look at: http://dapps.ethercasts.com/ http://dapps.ethercasts.com/
• deleted 9y ago
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• NamTaf 9y ago
  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.
  • dgcoffman 9y ago
    Segwit and Lightning Network; agility of Litecoin to evolve and advance. These are the reasons LTC is moving now.
  • oelmekki 9y ago
    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.
    • runeks 9y ago
      > 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.
• eelkefolmer 9y ago
  Litecoin spiked up from $16 to $36 this morning. Trading on GDAX (also part of coinBase) has far lower fees (0.25%) than coinBase (1.5%)
  • massaman_yams 9y ago
    Or zero fees, if you're a market maker.
  • deleted 9y ago
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• jerguismi 9y ago
  Segregated witness should activate in litecoin in about ~6 days. http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php http://litecoinblockhalf.com/segwit.php
  • andy_ppp 9y ago
    What is this?
    • TD-Linux 9y ago
      It's a feature originally developed for Bitcoin: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/ https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/ Litecoin is based on Bitcoin Core's codebase and therefore inherited it as well. Due to various reasons it's activating on Litecoin before Bitcoin.
    • proto-n 9y ago
      A somewhat controversial protocol upgrade developed for bitcoin. On the bitcoin network it has not reached the necessary support yet. Most bitcoiners view its activation on litecoin as a large scale beta test.
      • cashmonkey85 9y ago
        This is really not the case. It's been pair reviewed and testing for 2 years. Plus has been run on testnet since last year. It's technically superior and should be activated on bitcoin but it's been blocked for political reasons
        • proto-n 9y ago
          You are reacting to something my comment doesn't say: that somehow segwit is not good enough. I only said it was somewhat controversial (which it is, for whatever reasons, didn't say it was technical) and that bitcoiners view it as a beta test, which is/was a widely accepted sentiment on both /r/Bitcoin and /r/btc. I didn't even say it needed one. I said the latter more to illustrate the relationship between segwit+bitcoin and segwit+litecoin than segwit itself.
• tuxracer 9y ago
  Is there a reason a lot of these cryptocurrencies have suddenly started to skyrocket all at once?
  • jbpetersen 9y ago
    Network effects of people who held one that skyrocketed then diversifying into others and news around any given one skyrocketing drawing people to the space in general. Not to mention that every single one is an experiment that feeds back into the collective knowledge of what makes a good cryptocurrency, even as any individual one can only choose a single set of all the known tradeoffs.
  • RexetBlell 9y ago
    I think that more and more people are learning about cryptocurrencies and it hit a critical mass.
  • andy_ppp 9y ago
    There was something like ¥30bn (£200m+) of Bitcoin traded in the past 24h, seems very very high but I guess it happened. Anyone have details?
    • RexetBlell 9y ago
      The total 24h volume for Bitcoin is over 650 million USD: https://coinmarketcap.com https://coinmarketcap.com
  • RandomInteger4 9y ago
    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?
    • i_cant_speel 9y ago
      Are people honestly that concerned about North Korea?
• dvdhsu 9y ago
  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 rebalance once a week. We would send out investor updates and let you know what the weights are, along with performance over the past week. We're YC and our previous idea didn't work out, and this is something we're considering pivoting to. If we get enough interest we'll start one!
  • hasch 9y ago
    Someone could always go to https://coinmarketcap.com/ https://coinmarketcap.com/ and (sorted by market cap) buy the top N weighted by their current market cap relative to each other. I would say there is no real need for an index at all.
    • rubber_duck 9y ago
      It's a PITA to buy/sell crypto concurrency, and the difference between exchange price is huge based on seller - having a fund that would do these things efficiently at scale would be useful.
  • RoboTeddy 9y ago
    If I believed that the people behind the fund were capable of separating nonsense projects from real ones by reading their whitepapers, then absolutely yes!
  • pferdone 9y ago
    There already is such a thing with Iconomi. https://medium.com/iconominet/iconomi-cryptocurrencies-index-icnx-21-december-2016-rebalancing-transformation-into-iconomi-8e31e48493ab https://medium.com/iconominet/iconomi-cryptocurrencies-index...
  • ra 9y ago
    I have a few Eth and Btc, but was thinking today how it would make more sense to hold a portfolio of say the top 10 coins weighted by market cap, and rebalance every month based on https://coinmarketcap.com/ https://coinmarketcap.com/
• hultner 9y ago
  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?
  • VMG 9y ago
    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 (enabling https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/). Segwit was originally planned for Bitcoin, but it turned out to be highly controversial and was therefore hasn't been activated for Bitcoin yet. In my opinion, Litecoin will be the best scaling crypto-currency in a few weeks.
    • hultner 9y ago
      Makes me curious. If not by market cap, how would you rank them?
      • VMG 9y ago
        It's hard to find objective metrics. I would look at real-world usage and utility. The currencies fall in a very clear distribution there -- bitcoin and all others.
        • geppeto 9y ago
          The ole e-commerce metric. Does anyone else hate when they have tunnel vision for years and are made aware of a really amazing opportunity they should have noticed earlier? Many crypto tokens are dividend producing assets, just like most separate corporate bonds have yields. Sure there may be somebody wishing the dutch east india company's bonds were successful in underpinning global finance for 500 years, but the reality is that it pioneered a high yielding asset class. In crypto, there are investible assets, and many people want them as they can gain decent yield from them. Those networks don't require mass transactions per block to be valuable. But you can also create applications on those networks to make them even more valuable.
• joshuaswaney 9y ago
  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.
• cableshaft 9y ago
  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.
  • iopq 9y ago
    Back in the day, I literally sent a check to some guy via snail mail to get some Bitcoins. That was the BEST way to acquire them!
    • cableshaft 9y ago
      Yeah, and there was a whole site based around finding local people willing to meet you in a parking lot or coffeehouse, you give them the money, they give you the coins, drug deal style. That was just about the only other way to get it at the time.
• Uptrenda 9y ago
  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 ...
  • neomindryan 9y ago
    All of this was arguably true two weeks ago. Today, Litecoin has locked in support for Segwit, and in about a week it will be possible to create Lightning Network transactions using Litecoin. This is largely due to the efforts of the creator, Charlie Lee, who was able to build consensus among the community to activate Segwit. Contrast this with the inability of the Bitcoin Community over the last few years to get any improvements added. You may think this is a bad thing because Litecoin has a more centralized authority governing it, or you may think it's a good thing because Litecoin has a way to improve itself, but either way I'd argue Litecoin has very recently become more than what you described.
    • h1d 9y ago
      This. As the price indicated, it was 1/10 the value of itself from the Chinese bubble while Bitcoin has reached all time high now until it realized its use as a good real world test of the Bitcoin's newer features when Bitcoin struggled to apply those due to political and financial conflict within the community but Litecoin went ahead being a much smaller community and is the first to have it activated. Being almost identical to Bitcoin actually increased its value as its results can be a good indication for Bitcoin as well. As a cryptocurrency, it's pretty much of no use but as a real world play ground for newer features for Bitcoin, it's pretty optimal and it just proved it has a room to stay than being irrelevant.
• lemonsqueeze 9y ago
  When will they provide full support for CAD?
• quotha 9y ago
  This is all gonna end bad
  • koolba 9y ago
    That's what's cool about a ponzi scheme. The end doesn't matter as long as there's enough bumps on the ride to bring in fresh suckers.
    • vocatus_gate 9y ago
      Do you even know what a ponzi scheme is?
      • koolba 9y ago
        Yes. What part of a crypto currency with no established usage outside of speculation would exclude it from being labeled as such?
        • vocatus_gate 9y ago
          From Black's Law Dictionary: Ponzi Scheme: "...Money from the new investors is used directly to repay or pay interest to earlier investors" Bitcoin does not fit the definition of Ponzi scheme for numerous reasons: - There are no paid dividends to anyone - The purpose of using bitcoin isn’t to recruit new participants - There’s no centralized body that funnels money up to the top - Unlike Ponzi schemes, Bitcoin retains value and continues to function even if no new participants join the ecosystem Bitcoin fails the litmus test for a Ponzi scheme in any number of ways. The boring reality is that it is just a value transfer network that grows more useful the more people join it (much like a telephone network grows more valuable the more people are reachable on it).
          • koolba 9y ago
            We're talking about litecoin, not bitcoin. The ponzi aspect of it is that it's inherently worthless and people who bought in early are paid off by money (or even bitcoin) coming from later suckers.
• edpichler 9y ago
  Why should I use litecoin for transfer money when there is bitcoin with more liquidity? I really don't get this yet. Anyone could explain? PS: I am a Bitcoin enthusiast, and I am not criticizing Litecoin, I just want to understand the possible advantages it could have.
  • johndevor 9y ago
    I think they may be trying to put pressure on China to go with Segwit. This move would show Segwit's feasibility when it gets activated in a couple of weeks on Litecoin.
  • hybridsole 9y ago
    Litecoin has a fraction of the transaction fees of bitcoin, so instead of buying something that costs $10 and paying about $1 in miners fees, with LTC you would pay a few pennies at most. Granted, most retailers only accept Bitcoin if they accept cryptocurrency at all, but this may change as more people use LTC for smaller payments.
    • edpichler 9y ago
      What transaction fees you mean? I can transfer between wallets with no cost using BTC right?
      • NeutronBoy 9y ago
        They're "optional", but the miners can pick and chose which transactions they include in a block, and the larger the fee they get from the transaction, the more likely it is to make it into the block.
        • bhaak 9y ago
          They are optional but it is no longer safe to send a transaction without fees as the code in Bitcoin that allowed for free transactions if they met certain rules has been removed. You might get lucky but you can always resend with fees to push it through.
• kzisme 9y ago
  I don't really get the draw towards crypto-currencies - aside from mining them to bring more into the pool of available currency - is there a point to purchasing or using them to make purchases? Is there a reason I should start using these currencies? Aside from trading currencies to make a few bucks?
  • tboyd47 9y ago
    It is a radically new and experimental type of money with a unique set of strengths and weaknesses. In some situations it is currently superior to all other options. Bitcoin is available anywhere the internet is available (so it cannot be censored), and has a relatively low, flat transaction fee. This gives it utility in money transfers. It is also secured with cryptography and anonymous (yet not completely un-traceable), giving it utility for storing value.
    • flyingfences 9y ago
      Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous.
  • overcast 9y ago
    No, really the only point of crypto-currencies are for speculating, playing stock market "lite", scams, and funding illegal transactions. I made my money on it ages ago, and it was nothing but a minefield.
  • elif 9y ago
    It is a value store which is insulated from manipulation by Central Banks and not speculatively dependent upon the performance of a particular company or nation. It is subject to precise, predictable, and slow inflation. If you look at Greece where savings accounts got a haircut and ATM withdrawals were frozen, or Venezuela where staple commodities and health care are now in cases only available for Bitcoin due to their currency crisis, the robustness of it is apparent. It does have technical risks, but those are simple and easily understood. Personally, I am excited about ethereum, which turns the global mining network into a Turing complete engine for arbiterless smart contracts, where payment is built into the process mechanically rather than obliged legally and bolted on by trust like in a traditional contract.
• pyabo 9y ago
  Litecoin is now back because of Segwit. It's Bitcoin's hope to push a final acceptance of Segwit on Bitcoin. But, it doesn't have a real value in my opinion. About cryptocurrencies in general I can say that I use them to get payments and to pay employees and I find them very useful and the user experience is much better than normal banking (fast international transfers and complete tracking) and no need for KYC.
  • kordless 9y ago
    I would modify that slightly and say Litecoin is back because of the Lightning Network, which benefits greatly from features provided by Segwit, and which itself leverages payment channels backed by multi-sig addresses. While Lightning can be enabled without Segwit, it's far more trustworthy with it, than without it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpfvhiqFw7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpfvhiqFw7A
    • QML 9y ago
      Yeah there's no way to the transaction rate of PayPal or Visa without the use of side chains -- modifying the blockchain protocol only results in linear changes to scalability.
    • flyingfences 9y ago
      > which benefits greatly from features provided by Segwit Which is only possible because of the features provided by SegWit.
      • kordless 9y ago
        Actually, that's not technically true. FWIU, Lighting could be run on both Bitcoin and Litecoin today, but issues with transaction malleability could cause it to be less than trustworthy, for some use cases. So, Segwit, which fixes transaction mailability by moving the header in the transaction to it's own section, enables a higher trust Lightning network to be deployed, on top of a more trustworthy blockchain.