Litecoin (LTC) – What to Know Before Investing

Written by Adolph Obasogie - Reviewed by Coin Review Team

Published: May 2, 2018 | Last Updated: Mar 14, 2019

2024-04-14T17:16:29+00:00

What is Litecoin?

Litecoin is a digital currency built on a distributed ledger, also known as the blockchain.

The network is entirely peer-to-peer, this makes transactions censorship-resistant. Transactions are directly between users and verified by miners that utilize a proof-of-work protocol. Subsequently, these transactions are relayed to all participating nodes and stored in an immutable and public viewable ledger. No single entity controls the network, and the code is entirely open-source.

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Litecoin is a fork of the Bitcoin Core Client, with slightly modified attributes. The native asset of the network goes by the ticker LTC.

History

Litecoin was released on 7. October 2011 via GitHub open-source client, developed from a former Google employee named Charlie Lee. On 13. November 2011 the network went live.

To find out insider news, before-the-public, I advise you to bookmark www.blockchainwhispers.com

Can Litecoin be mined?

Yes, the consensus mechanism is PoW, and it uses the Scrypt algorithm. ASICs for this kind of algorithm are available, for example through Bitmain.

What differs Litecoin from other Cryptocurrencies?

Litecoin, a fork from the Bitcoin Core Client, differs only slightly from his ancestor Bitcoin.
Charlie Lee set the block time to 2.5 minutes, as opposed to BTCs 10 minutes. And he increased the total supply to 84 million units. Additionally, LTC uses a different hashing algorithm than BTC, namely Scrypt instead of SHA-256. Litecoin is seen as a means of quicker and cheaper payments as of his role model Bitcoin, whose primary use case now is that of a store of value. Many people compared LTC as the “silver” to the “gold “BTC.

Due to its faster block generation, Litecoin can handle a higher transaction throughput as Bitcoin. The downside of this is, because of Litecoins higher volume of blocks the Litecoin blockchain grows four times faster than Bitcoins blockchain.

How much is Litecoin worth today?

What is the total and the circulating supply?

The total supply of LTC is 84 000 000 and the circulating supply at the time of writing is 56 191 938 LTC.

Where can you buy LTC?

You can buy LTC on online exchanges (Coinbase, GDAX, Binance, OKEx, Bitstamp, etc.) or person-to-person locally (Litecoinlocal). For starters, we recommend Coinbase because it is one of the most secure and easy-to-use cryptocurrency exchanges.

Can LTC be sold for cash?

You can sell LTC for cash on several cryptocurrency exchanges that have fiat-pairings, most notably Coinbase, GDAX, Bitstamp, Kraken, and Bitfinex.

Future Development

SegWit is successfully implemented. The first test with atomic swaps is successfully finished. Litecoin plans to activate Lightning Network. Also, they seem to be working on colored coins and confidential transactions. And they seek to implement MAST (Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree) which will reduce data that are needed for smart contracts and make more complicated contracts possible.

Generally speaking, the Litecoin team aims to implement the same solutions, upgrades, and developments as the Bitcoin core team. Often Litecoin is quicker with the implementation of new tech because there is not the same at stake like at the BTC network. If something goes wrong in the Litecoin network, it is not nearly as much a catastrophic as it would be the case with Bitcoin. So the Litecoin core is a little more agile when it comes to new technologies and innovations.

Verdict and Rating

6/10
Solid Project. A clone of Bitcoin with slightly different attributes and other use-cases in mind. From an investing perspective not as interesting as BTC and technologically it is at risk of passing into Oblivion when BTC solves its scalability issues and the Lightning Network gains traction.

LTCs status as Silver in contrast to BTC as Gold was discussed in several lengthy discussions at Blockchain Whispers, which is by far the most informative crypto website in existence. Take a look at https://blockchainwhispers.com/premium/

6 / 10.0

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Disclaimer

The writer’s views are expressed as a personal opinion and are for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.