Homework Season 2 Task 1: Altcoins – Part1 "Looking beyond the Bitcoin" | lesson by @yohan2on

Hello ladies and gentlemen, I trust you are all doing great.
It a brand new week and am so excited that the Crypto academy lecture is finally back after a two weeks break.
It came back with some new professors and some changes in the rules.
I must confess I have really missed the lecture of my humble professor @yohan2on am really glad am attending your lecture today.

What are Altcoins

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Altcoin are know as alternatives to Bitcoin. They are digital currencies that make use of the blockchain technology to allow for encrypted peer-to-peer transactions. Altcoins expand on Bitcoin's popularity by tweaking the rules to cater to a wider range of users.

How does Altcoin works

In general, altcoins work similarly to the original Bitcoin. You can transfer funds from your digital wallet to another user's wallet using a private key. A blockchain, or recording ledger, exists in a cryptocurrency like this, where transactions are permanently and publicly registered, preventing trades from being changed or rejected after the fact. The blockchain is protected by mathematics proofs which confirm transactions in blocks.

What is Litecoin

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Many other coins have entered the blockchain market since the inception of Bitcoin in 2009. Each coin claims to be superior in some way, typically in terms of speed, fees, or scalability.

Litecoin is the first Altcoin created in 2011, an ex-google employee Charlie Lee created the token with the aim to solve the Bitcoin flaws.

The flaws which includes:.

• High Transaction fee

• The way it is mined

• Scalability

Litecoin was created with Bitcoin's core code in mind, and it aims to be a more convenient way to send small amounts of money. As a result, Litecoin transactions are quicker and less expensive to send than Bitcoin transactions.

As at the time of writing the current price of 1 Litecoin is $264.94 according to Coinmarket price

_{Litecoin price on Coinmarket}

How does Litecoin work?

With a few slight exceptions, Litecoin functions almost identically to Bitcoin. To verify transactions and create new blocks on its blockchain, Litecoin, like Bitcoin, uses a proof of work consensus method. Litecoin, on the other hand, uses the Scrypt mining algorithm rather than the SHA256 mining algorithm used by Bitcoin. It was created in this manner so that anyone with a standard machine could mine Litecoin.

Litecoin Mining

Every 2.5 minutes, a new Litecoin block is created, which is 4x faster than Bitcoin's 10-minute block generation time. When Litecoin was first developed, the block rewards were 50 Litecoin per block, and these block rewards are cut in half every four years. Block rewards are currently 12.5 Litecoin per block. The last Litecoin halving occurred in August 2019, and the next halving will occur in August 2023.

Aside from miners, Litecoin has nodes, which are network members. Simply put, these are computers (also known as full nodes) or mobile devices (also known as light nodes or light clients) that help to protect the Litecoin network by storing and double-checking transaction data. Unlike miners, Litecoin nodes are not compensated for their contributions to the network.

Where to get Litecoin

User can get Litecoin on almost any cryptocurrency exchange out there. Litecoin has nearly 800 trading pairs, and its 24-hour trading volume on many reputable exchanges, including Binance, Huobi, and Coinbase, is in the tens of millions of dollars.

In short, you can get Litecoin almost everywhere you can get Bitcoin, and this doesn't only apply to cryptocurrency exchanges. Only keep in mind that buying Litecoin with famous financial apps like Revolut or Uphold will almost certainly cost you more.

Litecoin cryptocurrency wallets

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With a few exceptions, nearly every cryptocurrency wallet you can find supports Litecoin since it has been around almost as long as Bitcoin. Trezor and Ledger are two famous Litecoin hardware wallets.
Exodus Wallet and Atomic Wallet are two common Litecoin mobile and desktop wallets. If none of the wallets listed here appeal to you, you can find a comprehensive list of Litecoin wallets on the Litecoin website.
Litecoin can also be store in exchanges wallet like Binance, Hotbit and Coinbase.

Litecoin Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Litecoin is decentralized: Litecoin Is based on a peer-to-peer network and is a great alternative to fiat money.

• Speed: A transaction with Litecoin takes 2.5 minutes to complete.

• Litecoin is scalable: Litecoin can process 56 transactions at once, compared to seven for Bitcoin and eleven for Ethereum.

• Litecoin produce more coin: Litecoin has set an upper limit on the amount of coins it can produce: 84 million.

• Litecoin is Open-source: Since Litecoin is an open-source scheme, improvements to its protocol can be made easily. Changes must be made in response to the evolving needs of the cryptocurrency sector.

• Minimum Transaction cost: The transactions for Litecoin were extremely low-cost, almost non-existent.

Cons

• Lost Credibility: Litecoin lost it's credibility in 2017, when the founder of Litecoin Charlie Lee sold all his Litecoin holding when Litecoin was high this cause a negative impact in the market.

• Branding Problems: Litecoin is compared to Bitcoin, but it is faster and more intelligent. Despite the fact that it transformed Bitcoin, its one-of-a-kindness has not been recognized. Litecoin's individuality has been harmed by Bitcoin's adoption of the SegWit protocol.

• Dark Web: Litecoin is widely used by 30% of underground vendors because of the cheap transaction fee, which has a negative impact on the currency's reputation.

Conclusion

A soft fork of Bitcoin, Litecoin, is more advanced in terms of technology, price, and transaction fees. Litecoin can process a blockchain every 2.5 minutes, which is significantly faster than Bitcoin's 10 minutes. With the recent addition of SegWit and the Lightning Network protocol for faster transactions, Litecoin is gradually upgrading its features.

To the attention of professor @yohan2on this is my homework task for 1st Week Crypto Course

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