Crypto Academy Week 1 - Homework Post for [@yohan2on]

Hello everyone !!!
I want to take this opportunity to say a very big thank you to @yohan2on for his wonderful time throughout this week's homework task and for the time taken to prepare such a wonderful resource. I must say that the resource was really helpful and it did help me in answering the questions given. This week's homework task was about: write about any one of the following Altcoins; Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP), Binance coin (BNB) and I have chosen to give a detailed account on Litecoin as a choice of topic to address.
To set the ball rolling, I will like you to know what Litecoin is before proceeding.

WHAT IS LITECOIN?

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Since the creation of Bitcoin(btc) in the year 2009, lots of other cryptocurrency coins have moved into the blockchain trading platform. Every coin trusts they give out something much better, which is normally associated with fees, scalability, or speed. Litecoin which was designed in 2011 is one of these coins. Its point of view is to be a lighter brand of Bitcoin(btc).

Litecoin was first developed in the year 2011 by an ex-Google worker called Charlie Lee. He trusted and believed that the Bitcoin code had a lot of faults. These faults or flaws he was referring to include the following; the manner Btc was mined, Btc's poor transaction speed, and also its potential to process more transactions per second scalability. Scalability here means the number of transactions a blockchain can undertake within a second. As many people use blockchain platform, the network becomes packed and speed of transaction can slow down.

Benefits of litecoin

Litecoin has many benefits as compared to other coins out there. For better and easier understanding, let's imagine that Amanda(who lives in Europe) wants to send Abu(who lives in Uganda) some money. If Amanda decides to use a bank it would;

1. Take a couple of days to arrive.

2. Might too expensive.

3. Might also require Abu to fill in lots of forms.

Nevertheless, if Amanda chooses to use Litecoin to make the payment, she can keep away from all of these problems. First of all, the fee of sending a Litecoin is cheap. It costs fewer cents to send! Secondly, Litecoin transactions take 2.5 minutes to arrive, which is much faster than a bank transaction. It does not matter if you want to send coins to someone near you, or to someone that is halfway around the world — it takes minutes for the money to reflex! Lastly, since Litecoin is decentralized, you have full administer over your funds. This simply means that you are not required to fill out any forms to be able to send your coins. These benefits make Litecoin a great substitute for sending and receiving money.

Differences between Bitcoin(btc) and Litecoin

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While there are many resemblances between bitcoin(btc) and litecoin, some of the indistinct differences include the following:

1. NUMBER OF COINS; Both litecoin and bitcoin have a definable number of coins in circulation. Bitcoin has about 21 million coins at hand, while litecoin has about 84 million coins at hand - that's about four times more than bitcoin.

2. TRANSACTION SPEED; Just as litecoin needs more experienced technology to mine than bitcoin, blocks are generated up to four times quicker. Litecoin also rectifies financial transactions a lot faster, and can also process a greater number of them over the same time frame.

3. MARKET CAP; Litecoin has a tiny market cap compared to bitcoin, but is still one of the most traded crypto coins.

What Is The Technology Behind Litecoin?

Trying to comprehend how blockchain technology operates can be confusing. This is because most of the things we talk about when we consider cryptocurrency are new. That’s why I believe it's important to spell out things in the most fundamental way possible, using real-life examples. In my earlier example, I lined out how Amanda (from Europe) wanted to transfer funds to Abu (from Uganda). Amanda has just found out that it would be much faster, easier, and cheaper to send Litecoin instead of making a bank transfer. Lets's dive into how she can do this.

1. To make transactions, you'll need a Litecoin wallet address. Anyone at all can get a litecoin wallet at no cost, and there are no limits to the number of bitcoin wallets you can create.

2. Amanda logs in to her Litecoin wallet and transfer Litecoin to Abu's Litecoin wallet address. She decides to send Abu 5 Litecoins. Once Amanda makes the transaction, they are then moved to the Litecoin blockchain.

3. There will be hundreds of thousands of other transactions that are as well going through the Litecoin blockchain. every 2.5 mins, a brand new block is generated. Think about a block as a vessel of a transaction.

4. The block carries lots of opposed transactions, including Amanda’s. Before the transferred coins arrive in Abu's wallet, the transaction must be certified as legitimate.

5. As long as Litecoin is decentralized, there's no unique authority to authenticate a transaction. Rather, a group of participants called miners uses their computing ability to work out troubling puzzles. This is how transaction blocks (in our case, vessels) are certified.

6. After 2 and a half mins, the miners are now done with solving the puzzle, confirmed all the transactions in that vessel, and Abu now has his coins. It’s as easy as that!

At the time this post was written, Litecoin is worth $264.81. It has a market cap of $17,678,246,693 with $6,415,735,339 daily trading.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Just for the fact that Litecoin transactions are faster and cheaper than that of Bitcoin’s, you should not presume that it's the better choice. If you want to invest in one of these cryptocurrencies, I strongly advise that you do in-depth research into both cryptos before investing.

Thank you very much!