should I dump $3,000 into litecoins

[elezzark]

or into a giant gpu cluster/mining rig

[rubycalaber]

the latter so then you can hack as many litecoins as you want and be an internet bandit

[rootbeer]

save your money?

[elezzark]

invest > save

[rootbeer]

good luck with your "investment"

[rubycalaber]

invest in an alienware

[elezzark]

i invested $1,000 into bitcoins 2 years ago and now im rich as hell

[macpro]

if the net goes down, how do cash your BC? It will be taken over.

Ammmo guns food silver seeds land plows chickens rabbits learn how to farm.

[maks]

I'm batman

[rootbeer]

i invested $1,000 into bitcoins 2 years ago and now im rich as hell

fake it till u make it ;)

[Camoron]

what are litecoins are they the new replacemnt for bitcoins?

[elezzark]

Hi, I have held Bitcoins for a while and have recently started converting them to Litecoins. I would like to share why.
I think a lot of the activity in this subreddit is from people realizing that GPU mining of Bitcoin is becoming unprofitable; you are looking to Litecoin as your latest venture. If that's what you're here for, then you're on the right track!
Litecoin is by far the most popular alternative cryptocurrency, and for very good reason. It holds strong to the core architecture of the Bitcoin, inheriting most of Bitcoin's codebase. This is a good thing. Where it differs, it differs in well thought and beneficial ways. Where it doesn't, it inherits the time tested strengths of Bitcoin.
In particular, there are four times more Litecoins that will be generated than Bitcoins. Also, the target time for new blocks is every 2.5 minutes instead of Bitcoin's 10 minutes. This means that transaction verifications start happening faster.
The big difference though is that Litecoin's proof of work algorithm is Scrypt. Scrypt replaces Bitcoin's SHA-256. This is a major change which affects the type of computers that can be used for mining.
Bitcoin over the next half a year will become almost entirely mined by ASICs because GPU miners are so much less efficient at computing Bitcoin's SHA-256 algorithm. The difficulty will become so high that GPU miners will actually lose money to electricity costs.
On the other hand, Litecoin's Scrypt algorithm is specifically designed to be hard to make an efficient ASIC for. Scrypt is meant to work efficiently on general purpose computing hardware, so your GPU will not have unfair competition against it. Not only that, but Litecoins are already consistently more profitable to mine than Bitcoins. If you watch the charts here, you'll very often find Litecoins producing 10-30% better yields than Bitcoin.
And that's only at the current exchange rates! I personally find Litecoins to be undervalued relative to Bitcoin by a very large margin. This is for multiple reasons. First, Litecoins are much newer and have had very little media attention. Second, Litecoins are still in very early stages in terms of market support.
You could think of Bitcoin currently as a toddler and Litecoin as an infant (with other altcoins being still in the womb and looking for a reason to be birthed). Bitcoin can now be easily exchanged with most major world currencies and there is a growing network of tools which make it easier, more secure, and cheaper than credit for merchants to accept Bitcoins even if all they want is their normal national currency. Litecoin is just now growing similar support, but it is coming! It is already easy to exchange your Bitcoins for Litecoins through btc-e.com and I expect the better Bitcoin exchanges and merchant services will adopt Litecoin support as interest continues to rise. When it's ready, we'll see a wave of value increase similar to what Bitcoin has seen.
I have seen a lot of people question why Litecoin or any altcoin needs to exist outside of Bitcoin and had to question it a lot myself before I jumped into Litecoins because I didn't see many good arguments out there. Most were based on poor assumptions of the fundamentals of the architectures and didn't really establish a solid ground for the longterm coexistence of multiple cryptocurrencies.
Then I realized that it is important for at least two cryptocurrencies which are secured by different classes of hardware to exist because it provides greater security and stability to the system of cryptocurrencies as a whole. For one, it makes the total available computing power for securing the networks greater which improves their total security. Mining is how cryptocurrencies are secured, and the more mining there is the more reliable their transaction systems are. For two, it ensures that markets can't be brought to a halt if there's a temporary issue with one cryptocurrency. Finally, a coin which can be secured with general purpose hardware (that is, Litecoin) is harder for governments to regulate against because it means that EVERYONE can mine them no matter what; governments won't ban general purpose computers, but they might ban crypto-hashing ASICs (and there are already countries which are unable to import the existing ASICs).
Imagine when all exchanges and merchant tools integrate Bitcoin and Litecoin, and cryptocoins are accepted everywhere. You can hold both and be sure that you're always able to buy groceries on the spot. Even if a bug causes a blockchain fork on one of the networks and merchants start holding transactions for them temporarily, your phone's cryptocoin app could just say "Bitcoins temporarily unstable. Use Litecoins instead?" You walk home with bread and don't have to hope you still have cash.
So my best recommendation for you is to mine and (mostly) hold Litecoins. Spend them whenever you can, but replace what you spend by exchanging your national currency for more Litecoins. If you can afford to, buy as much as you can of Bitcoins and Litecoins with your national currency. Personally, I am mostly buying Litecoins because I think they're more undervalued than Bitcoins.
P.S.: I go into more depth on why cryptocoin diversity is good and why it's good to have a coin which is efficient to mine on GPUs in my earlier posts on Cryptocurrency Market Evolution and the Long Term Future of Cryptocurrencies.
EDIT: A few days after I posted this a Venezuelan posted asking about Litecoin. In Venezuela, exchange of currencies (Bolivar to USD, for example) is illegal and it makes ordering anything internationally near-impossible. They are also unable to import ASICs. In the thread they discussed mining Litecoins in order to provide a means of converting their local currency to something which could be exchanged internationally legally. This is a perfect example of where Bitcoins can't help but Litecoins really shine.
EDIT 2: Litecoins are trading around $4 each. I recently wrote about why I think Litecoins are still undervalued.
EDIT 3: Litecoins are now valuable enough and the mining levels are high enough that the network is becoming pretty secure. Now is the perfect time to get more people to accept Litecoins for goods and services. If you're excited by the freedom, convenience, and security that Litecoins and Bitcoins are giving to people of the world and you want to spread the word and make them more useful, ask everyone you shop with to accept Litecoins.

[elezzark]

10 litecoins every 24 hours which makes about $32+ profit a day which is okay but its free money so why not but the main thing is you are getting free money just letting this thing sit here and when litecoin price goes from just a dollar or two like it is now to $90+, gg 2 ez

http://i.imgur.com/H18XTBLh.jpg

[rootbeer]

gl

[Garfield]

get a 3d printer and print yourself a girlfriend

[elezzark]

i have a girlfriend and it sucks

[Garfield]

yeah i meant teledildonic fuck machine. order occulus rift if you havent already and develop software, consoles will be obsolete in about 2 years

[Garfield]

or 3d print extended clips/gun magazines/bombs/quirky mustache rings for etsy

[lnopia the great]

do you exchange the coins or horde them

[Garfield]

arent those computers a little big to play steam games?

[skrizach]

invest in precious metals

[rootbeer]

arent those computers a little big to play steam games?

dota 2 is gonna run at 40993408 fps

[elezzark]

do you exchange the coins or horde them

sell some keep some, they will increase in price by 10x at least within a year, i wont start selling until worth $10 each and then ill still have a stash for like 500 for when they are worth $100 one day

[fanfare]

you'll double your money the second it goes onto gox, but then its going to crash instantly.

[juji]

10 litecoins every 24 hours which makes about $32+ profit a day which is okay but its free money so why not but the main thing is you are getting free money just letting this thing sit here and when litecoin price goes from just a dollar or two like it is now to $90+, gg 2 ez

http://i.imgur.com/H18XTBLh.jpg

Welcome to electric bill

[juji]

You should make a startup that you accept bitcoins or litecoins instead of investing miner machines and $ 3000

[skrizach]

yeah, seriously.
If your two options are invest in the coins, or buy a mining rigs, just invest.
I read an article that said people that build their own mining rigs on a small scale spend more money on electricity than they make.

[juji]

One balanced rig is the best way to have 50% profit instead of powerful miners could generate a lot of electric consumption

It depends about the hardware, if you use Unix with nice 19 mode it should save CPU processing power.

[juji]

Hiroshima's realistic investement

http://i.imgur.com/n5DInQ8.png

He is going to lose another less than $ 6000

[skrizach]

One balanced rig is the best way to have 50% profit instead of powerful miners could generate a lot of electric consumption

It depends about the hardware, if you use Unix with nice 19 mode it should save CPU processing power.

mining is done with GPU power not CPU power, so mitigating the CPU consumption is a non-issue

[juji]

Yeah, CPU is the past because GPU doubles than CPU.

There a best thing to invest https://products.butterflylabs.com/50-gh-s-bitcoin-miner.html they say you can get lower electric bill and less high temp, so you can get warranty. This is 2013.

It generates 20 hashes per second, power uses between 600 and 700 watts and it's connected via USB.

If you want to buy this, so you can't get shipping to your home, but it takes 2 or more months to ship.

[jon]

:smug:

- rootbeer has made two terrible decisions now, one is bitcoins and the other is lisa

- elz is now way the fuck behind hiro in bitcoin acquisition because he discounted to the old price when doing the math and ignored appreciation

[steveyos]

idk about any of that but second life rules

[steveyos]

definitely good idea to buy and sell lindens you can actualy do that like stock market, the price goesup and down and some people pay more etc