Since last December the LTC/BTC ratio lost half of its value: (o.05 >>>0.025) http://imgur.com/9orTuID There can be a fe explanations for this: 1. Early popularity lost to other alt coins, specially Doge. 2. Community isn't as active than others. 3. Lack of specific inventions. 4. Investors' money/attention is too divided. 5. It was maybe over heated even compared to BTC back in December, and now it is just adjusting. etc.etc I like LTC better than BTC, but this ratio loss doesn't bode well for the future of Litecoin...
Interesting that you can trade the spread. Theoretically it should trade at 25% as there are four time as many ltc to btc.
I know what I am going to keep under my pillow, physical Litecoins: https://cryptovest.com/product/zinodaur-physical-litecoin/ Wow, apparently there are more than 1 companies making these, this is the Lealana coin, sales has been suspended though: You can still get it on Ebay....
All digital currencies are essentially identical. The minute differences in design are hardly substantive to its use as a device to settle international transactions. Bitcoin is the famous one. So. That's the one. While theoretically it might be interesting to design a "perfect" digital currency for international transactions, the marginal difference in its attributes are of non-consequence. Bitcoin is "good enough".
Oh boy, where do we start? But if so, then don't argue that Bitcoin is limited, if essentially the same altcoins are available. And I might as well buy the cheaper ones or the shinier ones...
6: (and the only one really causal) during December (and the months before) there were high hopes that the Major Exchanges (BTCchina, Huobi, and especially: Gox) would add Litecoin to their trading offering. In which case payment processors like BitPay and Coinbase could be able to add them as well (and thereby making Litecoin possible to be used with tens of thousands of shops all over the world). We all know what happened to Gox in the last 2 months: so a setback in Litecoin's price as well. Currently there are rumors that Huobi will add Litecoin soon... so we might get some new price up driving activity. But not much as the Payment-processors (BitPay and Coinbase) are mainly using the Bitstamp exchange (which denied any Litecoin development). As far as I know, only one payment processor, GoCoin offers Litecoin. GoCoin is making waves in Asia, mainly.
Too much typing, offtopic. Do a research. This thread is about the BTC/LTC ratio... Now Hoi brought up an interesting point, why exchanges are so slow adapting LTC? One would think, more products traded, the more commission coming in. Maybe they don't want to butcher their golden egg giving chicken, Bitcoin and are afraid of the competition taking away the volume... Also, more technical issues, more chance of getting hacked... Anyhow, everything is being equal, one would think that in the long run the ratio would start to convert towards 1:4, because the volume is the major difference between them. Possible explanations: "The guy who runs bitstamp is blatantly self serving so we'll have to help support other exchanges that trade ltc. The bitstamp owner is an obvious early adopter who doesn't want litecoin taking a cut of bitcoins market share. He's stated on numerous occasions that he doesn't think litecoin offers anything new and that it's useless. Really it should be the customer who decides that shouldn't it? He probably also bought into ripple which is why he sells ripple units but not litecoin."
I like Litecoin for its potential as a currency in every day transactions. I like Bitcoin for its potential to settle international currency transactions (central banking). I like Ripple as a token to represent a debt between known and familiar parties. I like Promise Language as a banking protocol to describe these, and other, transactions. From a software perspective: Promise Language is the interface between the systems. A standard format.
I'm not surprised Litecoin is dropping in relation to bitcoin. The litecoin community is literally doing nothing to integrate it into society. If you just do a google news search the only thing that really pops up is about mining litecoin and selling litecoin on an exchange. Nothing about people accepting it as payment in society. Where as you do a Dogecoin news search and its all about people accepting doge as payment. Here are some quick screenshots i took from google of litecoin and dogecoin searches. As you can see....the dogecoin community is serious about making this an actual currency...not just something you can buy/mine, hold and sell later to the greater fool.