I am putting this down in TT.. just cause it could have some "deal" made about it.

For several months now ( and as I reported here) I have been "mining" litecoins. Basically this means my PC has been on 24/7 running a program to process transactions and do "made up work" for a reward of Litecoins. As a refresher - Litecoins are completely fiat .. madeup currency with no real value other than what others are willing to trade for it. While I was mining the coins, I found a "stock market" just for Litecoins.. since this was "free money" to play with play I did.

I figure I mined about 100... parleyed that into about 160 litecoins worth ( at the going rate of $2.40) about $384. I could see that the mining was getting less and less productive, this occurs on purpose, and I decided it was time to cash in. I was able to sell my stocks, all at a profit, ( but I could have gotten more had I been patient) for about 145 Litecoin. I immediately turned around and bought 12 1 ounce silver bars with the litecoin (no exchange to dollars made).

By the way this the second time I have bought silver bars with Litecoins. My total bought with litecoins is 13, my total owned is 23 plus more collectable forms ( Silver Eagles, dollars, and halves).  Not a fortune by any stretch.. but fun to do. And all basically free.

I am once again mining for more coins... but as far as I am concerned I have done what I set out to do. Have some fun with a new concept, learn something. Got something to give to the eventual grandkid.

People who buy silver are terrorists as are people who mine bitcoins. People who sell computer components are only mostly terrorists, more than the Diet Coke of terrorism but less than the Jolt Cola of terorism.  

Wait, this should be in another thread!!  

Steve H wrote on 08/31/13 at 08:30:10:


Its part of the entire sub-system. UNlike like paper money or any other phyisical money, this electronic currency could be mass produced ad-infinitum.. SO built into the system were several strategies, to prevent that:
difficulty level - this kicks in two ways:
1: the difficulty starts low and forever increases. This give early adopters an incentive, but blocks over production on a long term scale. This growth in difficulty is a static rate.

2:  Over-production suppression. The difficulty can also go up or down based on current output versus expected growth path.

3: max coins produced. Thats right, there is finite amount of coins that EVER will be produced. 84 million.  Once that is reached, there could be an inflationary element that would likely occur.

Difficulty on (LTC) 2013-09-02 is 1102.3148011, when I started is was just over 300. So its 3 times harder ( nearly 4) to mine that back in April.

Because the entire system is not centralized and is "open", not putting such functions into the base algorithm would just beg crime. OF course the fiat systems in use the world over DO commit the crime of debasing their currency... including the USA. So what politicians promise not to do.. is prevented by the LTC algorithm at its inception. Imagine if the governments were forced to be honest and not debase their currency. The world would be a very different place.  

Bitcoins began as something mined via CPU. The CPU was displaced by the GPU which was 100 times faster. That was replaced with the custom ASIC, which is even faster, and more stable. So yes, in way you either have to invest in better mining tech or get left behind. LTC progressed from CPU to GPU nearly immediately. But LTC was created by design to not be friendly with ASIC products. Still as the difficulty increases, I would need to add more GPUs or give up. I choose to give up.

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 09/02/13 at 20:20:18:


While LTC functions as a currency .. they also function as a commodity. So simple supply and demand. Over time the economy ( that would use LTC) would come to expect a simple linear increase in LTC availability, this would tend to keep the value of the LTC down. Once the cap is reached, that increase stops. At that point supply is capped, but demand is not.

Personally I do not think that LTC will ever get there, instead I suspect that a successor will. More than likely, some inter-governmental (central bank)  plan that would replace physical fiat with electronic fiat. The promise for users would be that congress could not "just" print their way clear of debt, as the algorithm would stop them (with some leeway).