In contrast to the globally popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin, Litecoin may not gather many headlines, still, it ranks among the top list of cryptocurrencies. It is also among the oldest cryptos. No matter whether Bitcoin is a popular cryptocurrency around the globe, it lacked in transaction speed and mining. Litecoin excelled in overcoming those shortcomings of the former crypto coin.
The main advantage of Litecoin is it can be used for daily transactions. If you search for the best Litecoin wallet in India, then it is a Lite wallet. This wallet is ideal for Android users and is considered the best option. Charlie Lee, the genius mind behind the creation of Litecoin is the original creator of the iOS version of LoafWallet.
Litecoin: the oldest among the altcoins?
There is always a purpose behind the creation of technology. First to make a mark of itself to come as the best substitute to the existing technology. The same can be said for Litecoin, created by Charlie Lee, an ex-Google engineer. No matter if this cryptocurrency is the oldest since it came after Bitcoin, it is categorized in the group of altcoins. This is a name given to those cryptocurrencies that came after the global success of Bitcoin.
Fork of Bitcoin
Litecoin is the oldest altcoin known after Bitcoin. But do you know it is the fork that emerged from the Bitcoin protocol, eleven years ago? Yes, it is true. In other words, LTC is the spinoff of Bitcoin and is preferred for speedy, secure, and low-cost payments.
The motive behind the launching of Litecoin
The main motive behind the launch of Litecoin was to overcome the shortcomings in some of the features of Bitcoin. Firstly, its creator Charlie Lee came up with the development of a new hashing algorithm, called Scrypt. It became an advantage for Litecoin in terms of a fast speed in the transaction process. Contrary to it, the process of transaction is very slower about 5 transactions per second. It takes around 10 minutes in generating new blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Comparison between the transaction speed of Bitcoin and Litecoin
It becomes very frustrating for the merchants when they experience the use of Bitcoin’s slow speed for the transaction that takes hours. Around 6 confirmations for this crypto transaction are needed. The situation is just like when you go for an online purchase, and is using your plastic money card (credit card) but the process of the transaction takes an hour to complete.
Now if you compare the transaction speed, then the transaction speed of Litecoin is faster at 54 seconds in comparison to Bitcoin. Also, the creation of new blocks on the Litecoin blockchain takes around 2.5 minutes. The advancement in the transaction speed via Litecoin was to ensure the merchants to not bother about the long transactional process of Bitcoin. Because now they can experience Litecoin that excels in faster transactions and can settle their payments in a short period.
Working of Litecoin
There is no big difference between the functioning of Bitcoin and Litecoin since both are open-source projects that exploit the use of PoW (Proof of work) for checking transactions. But there is something that makes Litecoin distinctive from Bitcoin, and it is the maximum number of supply. Where in the case of Bitcoin it is 21 million, it is 84 million coins in the case of Litecoin.
Mining of Litecoin
To get the authority of recording new transactions to the blockchain, the miners need to solve difficult numerical problems, which are called hashes. Once there is the closing of the block is, no further changes are possible. On solving the complex hash, the first miner is rewarded with 12.5 LTC. One must know that there is a need for immense computing power for solving the complex hash problem. Ample energy and space are a must. Pools of crypto miners applying smooth hardware and crypto miners have contributed to mining LTC.
LTC halving
When it comes to controlling the supply of Litecoin, the halving is akin to Bitcoin’s. The supply of Litecoin is capped at 84 million coins. Yet, if a new block is being added to the blockchain of Litecoin by the miners, they get a reward of new-generated Litecoin. This can lead to rising in the supply of this altcoin if it isn’t for halving. Earlier there were 50 LTC in the blockchain of Litecoin. After some years, it got reduced by halving to 12.5 LTC as a block reward. Now the next halving of LTC will take place in the next year (2023).
Use of Litecoin
The one big reason why Litecoin is preferred by merchants for easy trades is it’s being highly liquid. To make payments with LTC, you can also prefer digital currency applications like BitPay. And in case you want to prefer it for peer-to-peer payments, then the Binance application is the best to go with.
Steps to selling LTC
Now you must be inquisitive in knowing how to sell Litecoin. Well, it can be done by following some brief steps.
- First of all, you have to create an account on a cryptocurrency exchange, like say Kraken.
- For that, you should make a strong password, mention your email address, and do not forget your username.
- Check your Kraken account and send Litecoin to your Kraken address
- Now you can begin by selling Litecoin.
Is Litecoin a good investment?
Due to its staying value and flexibility, Litecoin is indeed the best to choose for investment.