*Litecoin - The Bitcoin alternative you probably haven't heard of*
While everyone is talking about the explosion of Bitcoin's value and it's wide coverage in the media of late, people are forgetting it is helping other cryptocurrencies like Litecoin and many others to go up in value rapidly. As you might have probably heard Bitcoin has gone up over $16000 for 1 Bitcoin. That is in about 4 months time, has gone up 4 to 5 times its value and does not look like it's gonna stop there. The year over year growth right now is about 2041.36%. That figure right there is not an easy thing to comprehend, as a lot of financial experts predicted it would crash soon as many of them said it was a bubble that would burst. But to all the nay-sayers Bitcoin has surpassed everyones exception and some people are even mortgaging their house to jump on this bandwagon due to the fear of missing out.
Now let me introduce Litecoin.
Litecoin is a form of cryptocurrency that has been in existence since 2011. It was created by Charlie Lee, a former google employee. The main difference between Bitcoin and Litecoin are:
"The Litecoin Network aims to process a block every 2.5 minutes, rather than Bitcoin's 10 minutes. The developers claim that this allows Litecoin to have faster transaction confirmation.
Litecoin uses scrypt in its proof-of-work algorithm, a sequential memory-hard function requiring asymptotically more memory than an algorithm which is not memory-hard.
Due to Litecoin's use of the scrypt algorithm, FPGA and ASIC devices made for mining Litecoin are more complicated to create and more expensive to produce than they are for Bitcoin, which uses SHA-256"
Also, the total number of bitcoins that can be mined is 21 million, where as for Litecoin it's a whooping 84 million.
It is the 4th largest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash. The current market value of Litecoin is around 18 billion dollars.
“The vision is always I wanted Litecoin to complement bitcoin—not compete,” Lee said at a March Coinbase talk. “Bitcoin can be used for like moving millions of dollars between banks, buying houses, buying cars. It’s really secure… Litecoin can be used for cheaper things.”
So, Litecoin right now has huge potential. Specially someone like me, who doesn't have a huge chunk of savings or a house to mortgage, Litecoin seems approachable and might be my first cryptocurrency that I invest in.
I have closely been following Bitcoin, Etherum and Litecoin over last few months and to my surprise Litecoin has impressed me the most.
Here are some numbers:
On December 8th - 1 Litecoin = $96.88
On December 12th - 1 Litecoin = $376.62
In a week it has increased over 200%.
It has increased a substantial amount in less than a week.
If you compare year over year, it has increased 8217.13%. Thats almost quadruple of the year of year increase compared to Bitcoin.
So, I think Litecoin is probably the easier cryptocurrency to invest in right now, compared to Bitcoin. There are no guarantees and it might come crashing down at any point, but looking at the recent sudden increase in it's value it might be something to think about and probably it'll be the first cryptocurrency that I would be investing on. Like any other cryptocurrency you don't have to buy the whole single Litecoin, depending on your interest and budget you could start with something like $100 worth and go from there. Anyway, I'm not a financial and cryptocurrency expert so invest at your own risk. And lastly good luck on your ventures.
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