What Is Litecoin and How It Is Different From Other Cryptocurrencies?

Litecoin is a digital currency, also popularly termed as cryptocurrency, much like the popular Bitcoin. The currency can be transferred globally all across the world instantly, on a very nominal fee. Litecoin was one of the first cryptocurrency copies of Bitcoin. It was created by Charlie Lee, a former employee at Google.

Litecoin Value

Litecoin has a value for the same reasons as to why Bitcoin holds value. The key reason Bitcoin got its value is due to it being very scarce, yet very useful. Litecoin is essentially the same. LTC production is limited to 84 million only, which has created the scarcity. It is incredibly useful, as it can be used to transfer money anywhere at any time in the world for a nominal fee.

Litecoin Wallets

The production of Litecoin wallets is actually limited in nature. The only cryptocurrency that is being used on a regular basis is Bitcoin, so demand for Litecoin wallets is still not as strong, however, it is only destined to increase in the future.

Electrum LTC is one of the most packed and best Litecoin Wallet available today. It is an open-source software, just like the Electrum, the popular wallet for Bitcoin, and can be easily be used on Desktop, PC or Mac.

If you are more security-oriented regarding your LTC, you can make use of a hardware wallet, such as the TREZOR or Ledger Nano S. Both of these devices support LTCs, and can store coins offline, away from the reach of malware or hackers. Both of these devices are compatible to Electrum LTC, which means the user can use Electrum LTC to communicate with their hardware wallet as well.

If you wish to opt for secure storage, long-term solutions, hardware wallets will work for the best. These are trusted wallets, which can be used to store your Litecoins.

Litecoin is different to Bitcoin is various aspects. It contains more features as compared to the popular cryptocurrency. Bitcoins miners had been blocking a valuable improvement for the system, just in order to profit financially. Litecoin miners had also tired blocking this improvement, but caved in eventually.

This update was Segwit, which basically allowed doubling the size of any network it was applied on. As of now, Litecoin has Segwit, however, Bitcoin currently does not feature it. Before the update, Litecoin has 4x transaction capacity as compared to Bitcoin, however, with the Segwit update, it has 8x more capacity and potentially even more.

Litecoin also works slightly faster than Bitcoins, as blocks for LTC are created every 2.5 minutes, while for Bitcoins the blocks are produced on intervals of 10 minutes. This certainly means that transactions are faster with the use of LTC.

Litecoin Mining

Litecoin mining used to be very different in the past, and much easier in the past. At the time of writing this article, the latest price of Litecoin is about $71.42. In earlier days, LTC were easy to mine as there was virtually no competitions and they were cheap.

Litecoin is one of the most popular among cryptocurrencies, due to which it is pretty easy to buy, as compared to other small altcoins. Coinbase provides the easiest way for individuals to buy Litecoins in Europe, Canada, UK, USA, and Australia.

If you reside somewhere in Asia, Africa or South America then the best way for you is to buy bitcoins and then convert them using Changelly.

Potential Advantage

With Litecoin’s offering a great number of maximum coin limit, it offers a psychological advantage over other cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin. As in today’s times, purchasing a $2 product would cost at least 0.007 BTC or roughly 1 Litecoin. And as reports suggests, some people prefer transacting their money in whole units, rather than a big fraction of a unit. Offering a significant advantage to Litecoin.

Speed

On an average, a Bitcoin transaction takes about 10 minutes, while Litecoin only take 2.5 minutes on an average. With Segwit activation, Litecoin also gets Lightning Network, which Bitcoin does not feature. This eventually means that LTC supports almost instant transactions, while Bitcoin does not.

There are various advantages to Litecoin over Bitcoin, as Litecoin can handle much more transactions, given a shorter block generation time. Moreover, Litecoin barely charges any transaction fee, as its costs 1/1000 of LTC to process any transaction regardless of the size. That is almost 2 cents in current exchange rates, in heavy contrast to PayPal’s 3% fee.