I really like litecoin from a technical standpoint. Its faster and cheaper to transact than bitcoin. I use it to transfer value between exchanges. I think this is probably one of litecoins more popular use cases.
Im not quite sure if litecoin's future is tied to bitcoin or not. I have read some speculation that litecoin might be used to settle transactions on the bitcoin chain (off chain settlement). If litecoin is used in this way, I think thats great for and it has the potential to grow much more . If bitcoin's dominance is replaced however, is litecoin's value of being almost a secondary bitcoin diminished? I think this might be true as there are a lot of coins that are fast and cheap to transact that could be used in place of litecoin. In general I think the success of litecoin is somewhat tied to bitcoin and for this reason litecoin might not be a great hedge against bitcoin. However if bitcoin continues to succeed, I think litecoin will succeed as well.
What do you all think about the connection between litecoin and bitcoin's success?
great post! as someone heavily invested in bitcoin core, I do worry that holding litecoing doesn't represent a diversification. while litecoin is fast and cheap compared to bitcoin, there are a ton of other coins like steem and raiblocks which are even faster and cheaper!
do you think litecoin has any intrinsic value other than its possible use as a bitcoin settlement layer?
I think there are a lot of cryptocurrencies that may be as fast or cheap to transact as litecoin, but a lot of them are trying to claim to be more than just a currency (steem for example). I think there is some value in a crypto trying to only be a digital store of value. For example ethereum is great at handling transactions but i don't really think of it as a currency because of how it advertises itself / its trying to do so much more with smart contracts.
I think that compared to the other alt coins that are trying to sell themselves solely as a currency that litecoin's main advantages are
a. its association to bitcoin
b. brand familiarity: people are more familiar with it than something like raiblocks, for now. Its also on coinbase which means there is a good way to get it from fiat directly
c. trust: the network has existed for awhile without any major hacks to my knowledge
I think that if bitcoin began to fail and litecoin was able to distinguish itself well it could actually gain from bitcoins loss value. However if the two are associated as a pair I think this won't be possible.