The problem with this is that they move together somewhat, so if you wait for a big dip in BTC your LTC is going to dip also most likely.

Lol, is there a more miserable person ITT than RainTech?

it's just guess, based on reads from a bunch of sites.

Probably the person trolling the one educating people with facts.

I loled

A friend recently bought a mining contract - 20 g hash for 2 yr for I think 1000 USD.

https://www.cloudhashing.com/

Is there value in this as opposed to buying BTC directly?

Raintech, Seth, And Tom are all Dbags.

I feel like there's a lot more asterisking in this thread lately.

Nope, he shouldn't even mine close to 1 btc from that and the second year is completely worthless as he won't be mining a thing (well maybe .000000001 or something).

edit--well I guess that depends if diff doesn't increase that much he could eek out a profit there but if you think btc is going up you're just way better off buying btc than getting anything mining related.

after 6 months it will be worthless, let alone 2 years

He claimed in 10 days to have mined .17 btc. Seems high? Ofc the rate shouldn't hold across an annual basis.

No, that's in about the range I'd expect for 20GH at this difficulty.

That contract is definitely overpriced now as difficulty is going to jump any day.


If I had to guess, your friend will end up with .75-.9BTC

might be okay about the mining contract, because although for mining purposes it will be useless after x amount of time. can he resell some of it say after 2-3 months? to some ebay donk?

I don't think he can trade / sell it directly, he mentioned another option cex.io
where you can trade out at any time.

https://cex.io/

Thanks for the feedback, I don't think I will buy any contracts myself, just gambool on that free coin site.

If you have like $1k to invest then why not gamble it all.

Over $100k and I wouldn't recommend more than 5-10%.

Bitcoin is a huge gamble, no doubt about.

@ Alt-coin debate:

(I am just thinking loud / ramble and have to admit i am somewhat clueless on the detailed technical part of BTC. Please show me where i am wrong, i want to understand the logic better )

We often hear the argument that "if anybody comes up with a superior feature, BTC can integrate it". I do not agree. Theoretically this is possible, but i am not sure about the practicality. When starting new companies many noobs always say "but google/facebook could build this in one day". The fact is they don't and they can't especially if its high risk and controversial. I do see a parallel to Bitcoin. Once its big, it will behave like all big organisms. There's nothing inherently bad about it, but assuming BTC will instantly implement a superior is incorrect.


Lets say Gavin Andersen/ The foundation slowly build features into BTC that cooperate in a nice way with the US gvmt that people will not love, but where its not that bad that they will "revolt". Sort of like the boiling frog analogy.
If you say "but the miners and people of the world wont accept it" , then i beg to differ. There are commercial interests already and they will bow to regulators. Every person here with a decent position in BTC will also bow to regulators out of economic self-interest.

In short, i think BTC is as flexible as democratic elected governments. You have the illusion that you can "vote for change" and in theory that is true. But in practise, people hate changes that and i expect the same thing to happen with BTC.

==========================

Here is where i see a chance for an altcoin, but that is in the far far future. I have only superficial knowledge of altcoins and i stay out of them cuz i simply have no clue.

I just don't think they are totally worthless, but atm also don't see any superior functionality.


Thoughts?

i think the biggest difference between bitcoin and altcoins is that bitcoin has a much better chance at widespread adoption. this is pretty damn important. altcoins will probably always be used by some people. you can still mine them with a computer, which many people like. their market caps are still small enough that pump n dumps can be performed with a relatively small investment, so there is definitely money to made trading them, if you are willing to put in time to follow the swings. It might actually be the best way to earn bitcoins, aside from playing poker.

The alt-coin you would see that pops up out of this would be a fork of Bitcoin, where they continue to different places out of the same origin. That would be assuming there is some protocol change that somehow enables regulators.

It's possible alt-coins might fly under the radar more in this sceneario, but as soon as it picked up, it would face the same fate.

Poking holes in terrible arguments = douchebag.

You make a good point that bitcoin won't be able to jump on new features as dynamic as it should and maybe not jump at all.

However, the mainstream application for bitcoin is really just sending and receiving money.

Creditcards were invented in the 50s and they didn't change to much.

There is a lot room for improvement in usablitiy for Bitcoin but that is all on the Client side.

Its like the 3.5mm chinch its has a long history, and companies tried change the market with propriatary connectors but ultimately it survived and is now common in every electronic device, and I don't see that to change anytime soon.
Actually there very even innovations around that, added mic and player controls.

This is a good example of a very standard that is just used for a very simple thing listing to music vs. sending receiving money.
But like on bitcoin the shape wasn't change, the innovation were made ontop of the shape.
Nowdays, you can attach Creditcard reader, light sensors, windspeed sensors and all kinds of stuff on that 3.5mm audiojack.

I think you would be sorely disappointed with my current financial strategy.

It depends so much on individual situations and what you can lose and how much time you have to make it back and all that stuff. The younger you are and if you have high earning potential, the more I would dump into Bitcoins. But you have to be ready to hold several years.

A great article about litecoins from Eric Voorhees - creator of Satoshi Dice.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comm...coin_advocate/

Its all about how much risk is acceptable to you. If you are young and without a family and kids, then sure go for it. As long as you understand that there is a real risk that bitcoins could be almost worthless in the not too distant future.

I invested a small amount back when bitcoins were like $100, increased it to about 5% of my holdings when the price hit about $400 and plan on cashing out gradually to keep it below 10% of my investments.

I've seen you've been pretty down on alt-coins ITT Tom, but one very positive merit I see from them is their ability for new ideas to be tested before being integrated into bitcoin. Obviously as bitcoin gets bigger and bigger, changes are going to be made less dynamically and probably in a more conservative fashion. Smaller alt-coins will always be able to take more risks with innovations and seeing their successes/failures will give bitcoins more confidence and data in their decisions to adapt.

That being said, that would make for alt-coins to be riskier from an investment standpoint, but I think the continued existence and creation of them is very positive and valuable.