What is the Difference Between Litecoin and Bitcoin (bitcoin vs litecoin)

        

                                bitcoin ----------------- litecoin

Coin limit       

                              21 Million--------------- 84 Million

Algorithm

                   SHA-256 -------------------Scrypt

Mean block time

                     10 minutes------------2.5 minutes

Difficulty retarget

                            2016 block-------------2016 blocks

Block reward details 

Halved every 210,000 blocks-----------Halved every 840,000 blocks

Initial reward

                                           50 BTC-----------50 LTC

Current block reward

                                       25 BTC------------50 LTC

Block explorer 

              blockchain.info-------------block-explorer.com

Created by

                               Satoshi Nakamoto-------------Charles Lee

Creation date

                         January 3rd, 2009-------------October 7th, 2011

Market cap 

                     $10,467,596,650.78------------$540,274,528.26

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Mining differences

litecoin is a crytocurrency that is generated by mining (like bitcoin). It was created to improve upon bitcoin. The key difference for users being the 2.5 minute time to generate a block, but bitcoin takes 10 minutes. 

For miners litecoin takes a much more important difference to bitcoin, and that is its different proof of work algorithm. Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm. It is this characteristic that has given rise to the intense race in ASIC technology, and has caused an exponential increase in bitcoin's difficulty level.

Litecoin, however, uses the scrypt algorithm.its calculations are much more serialised than those of SHA-256 in bitcoin. Scrypt favours large amounts of high-speed RAM, rather than raw processing power alone, scrypt is known as a 'memory hard problem'.

The consequences of using scrypt mean that there has not been as much mining in litecoin because there is no ASIC technology for this algorithm. However, this will change,as companies like Alpha Technologies, which is now taking preorders.

To highlight the difference in hashing power, at the time of writing, the total hashing rate of the bitcoin network is over 20,000 Terra Hashes per second, while litecoin is just 95,642 Mega Hashes per second.

litecoin mining rigs come in the form of custom PCs fitted with multiple graphics cards (GPUs). 

There was a time when people could use GPU mining for bitcoin, but ASICs have made this method not worth the effort.

Transaction differences

The main difference is that litecoin can confirm transactions must faster than bitcoin. The implications of that are as follows:

    Litecoin can handle a higher volume of transactions thanks to its faster block generation. If bitcoin try to match this, it would need big updates to the code .

    The disadvantage of this higher volume of blocks is that the litecoin blockchain will be proportionately larger than bitcoin's, with more orphaned blocks.

  

  The faster block time of litecoin reduces the risk of double spending attacks

    A merchant who waited for a minimum of two confirmations would only need to wait five minutes, whereas they would have to wait 10 minutes for just one confirmation with bitcoin.

Transaction speed and confirmation speed are important as most merchants would allow zero-confirmation transactions for most purchases. It is necessary to bear in mind that a transaction is instant, it is just confirmed by the network as it propagates.

Bitcoin Litecoin image via Flickr. Mining Rig image via Wikipedia. Mining USB devices Image via Shutterstock.