What Is (LTC) Litecoin?
Litecoin (LTC) is a digital currency that was created in 2011 when the Bitcoin blockchain split. It was first made to address the developer’s worries that Bitcoin was becoming too centralized and to make it harder for big mining companies to get the upper hand in mining.
Even though enterprise miners eventually took over most of the Litecoin mining, the cryptocurrency has been changed into a coin that can be mined and a peer-to-peer payment system.
How to Learn About Litecoin (LTC)
By using a different encryption method, one of Litecoin’s original goals was to stop large miners from taking control of the mining process. But miners quickly changed how they used their specialized machines and kept growing their ability to mine.
Litecoin can be mined with ASIC miners, the same way Bitcoin can. A block in a blockchain holds information about a transaction. The mining software verifies the block and makes it visible to any participant in the system (called a “miner”) who wants to see it. When a miner checks it, the next block in the chain is made, and Litecoin is given to the miner.
Charlie Lee
Litecoin is an open-source global payment network that was made available to the public in 2011 by Charlie Lee, a former Google engineer. It is not run by a central authority. Lee called Litecoin a “lighter version of Bitcoin” and “the silver to Bitcoin’s gold.”
Maximum Supply of Litecoin
Litecoin was released with 150 coins already made, and there are a total of 84 million coins in circulation. Every 2.5 minutes, a new block is added to the cryptocurrency’s blockchain. The number of Litecoins in circulation is meant to decrease over time to keep the value of each coin.
Halfing Litecoin
‘Halving’ means to cut in half the reward given when a block’s hash and its transactions are verified and a new block is made. By halving, the number of Litecoins given out is cut in half. This slows down the rate at which new coins are made.
Halving dates for LTC:
- 50 to 25 LTCs on August 25, 2015
- 25 to 12.5 LTCs on August 5, 2019
- We expect 12.5 to 6.25 LTCs on August 23, 2023.
Hashing algorithm for Litecoin
Scrypt is the name of the hashing algorithm that Litecoin uses (pronounced es-crypt). SHA-256 is faster and uses less memory than Scrypt. But the cryptocurrency community liked it more after the Tenebrix project changed Scrypt so that it could be mined with regular CPUs in 2011.
Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners were hard to make because they needed a lot more memory than Scrypt did. But its setup that couldn’t be broken by ASICs didn’t last long. In 2016, the world’s first Litecoin ASIC miner came out.
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Changes to Litecoin
Litecoin’s mining ecosystem has changed from one where individual miners did most of the work to one where large mining pools run by tech companies do the vast majority of the work.
It can’t sell as much as other, more popular coins. But it is still one of the most traded cryptocurrencies. Out of the more than 18,000 coins that CoinMarketCap tracks, it stays in the top 30.
This shows that it is still a popular cryptocurrency, though investors aren’t as interested in it as they are in Bitcoin and some other newer coins.
How to Purchase Litecoin
Most cryptocurrencies can be bought on exchanges where they are traded. There are a few exchanges that can do business inside the U.S., but there are a lot more outside the U.S. It’s important to know that the Securities and Exchange Commission keeps an eye on and regulates exchanges in the U.S. to make sure that investors and traders’ best interests are looked after. Since this is the case, if you live in the U.S., you can only trade with people in the U.S.
Exchanges outside of the U.S. might or might not have regulatory authorities, but many countries have put in place controls or given their financial regulatory agencies regulatory authority.
There are a few places in the U.S. where you can buy Litecoin:
- Coinbase
- eToro
- Kraken
- Binance.US
- Robinhood
- Gemini
Litecoin: How to Sell It
Litecoin can be bought and sold on the same exchanges where it can be bought. But selling your cryptocurrency on a centralized exchange is not the same as selling it on a decentralized exchange. For example, if you want to sell your Litecoin on an exchange like Kraken, you’ll need to send your LTC to your Kraken address. The exchange will help you sell your Litecoin from there.
If you use a decentralized exchange like Kucoin or Crypto.com, you connect your wallet to the exchange and go through the “know your customer (or client)” registration process. Once you’re approved, you can put your Litecoin in a bank account and start selling it.
Some exchanges may let you withdraw fiat currency, so if you want to trade your LTC for fiat, you’ll have to find an exchange that lets you do that.
What is the difference between Litecoin and Bitcoin?
The first difference between Litecoin and Bitcoin is that Bitcoin has a limit on how many coins can be made. Bitcoin has a limit of 21 million coins, while Litecoin has a limit of 84 million.
The way coins are mined is another difference between Litecoin and Bitcoin. As was already said, Bitcoin uses SHA-256 and Litecoin uses a version of Scrypt that has been changed. Because the protocols are different, the times it takes to process transactions for each coin are different. Litecoin processes and confirms transactions four times faster than Bitcoin.
When transactions are processed quickly, security can be put at risk because there are fewer rounds of verification. Litecoin transactions are confirmed in 2.5 minutes, while Bitcoin transactions take about 10 minutes. This is good for small merchants who don’t want or need their transactions to be super secure.
Will there be a future for Litecoin?
It is hard to say how investors, traders, cryptocurrency fans, governments, and the general public will treat Litecoin in the future. Governments are looking into cryptocurrencies, more are being made every day, and the markets are very unstable.
Is it still a good idea to buy Litecoin?
Litecoin wasn’t meant to be a risky investment or a way to store money. However, not all investors use LTC in this way. If you want to know if Litecoin is a good investment for you, you should talk to a professional.
Is Litecoin or Ethereum Better?
Litecoin is a digital currency that can be sent from one person to another. Ethereum is an ecosystem that is powered by a global virtual machine that runs many different technologies that use cryptography. Ether (ETH), Ethereum’s token, is used to make transactions possible on the Ethereum blockchain. When it comes to value, ETH is usually in the top five, and more people trade it. Which one is better depends on your goals, interests, and how you plan to use it.
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