What Is Litecoin || The Younger Brother Of Bitcoin || What Differentiate It From Bitcoin

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While most people have heard of Bitcoin, Litecoin is only known to cryptocurrency insiders. My first cryptocurrency investment was in Litecoin, which I bought in July 2020.

Litecoin is an alternative virtual currency to the well-known Bitcoin.

The name Litecoin was drived out from Bitcoin. In today's article, I will elaborate more on the history of Litecoin, you will also understand the choice of the name Litecoin is not a coincidence, because Litecoin is really the little brother of Bitcoin, at least, from a technological perspective.

What Is Litecoin

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On October 7, 2011, Litecoin was created as a cryptocurrency. It is based on the same source code as bitcoin, but has been redesigned to solve bitcoin's inefficiency and transaction costs.

_{Screenshoot Taken From Coinmarketcap}

With a market capitalization of $10,356,789,337, Litecoin (LTC) is presently ranked #17 in terms of market capitalisation.

The value of the LTC, like all other cryptocurrencies, dropped during the market bubble "bearish," in 2021 dropping from $413.4 to $104.9

But currently it is trading at $155.15, with the 24hrs trading volume at $2,475,596,371

Who Created Litecoin

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While the creator of Bitcoin remains a mystery, the creator of litecoin is well-known, even well-known thanks to the creator's expertise at Google.

So, who is this person? It's none other than Charlie Lee, an American MIT graduate who worked at Google as an engineer to develop the Google Chrome browser. He joined the on of the largest cryptocurrency brokerage Coinbase , shortly after the creation of litecoin.

Litecoin vs Bitcoin

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Litecoin which was built to address some flaws in Bitcoin, is based on Bitcoin's computer code, Acknowledging this point. There are also several deference between the two cryptocurrencies as well.

Transaction: One of the most significant differences between the two cryptocurrencies is that Litecoin takes 2.5 minutes to generate a new block of transactions, whereas Bitcoin takes 10 minutes. This indicates that Litecoin is four times faster than Bitcoin at confirming transactions.

Mining (Proof-Of-Work): While both employ the Proof-Of-Work hashing algorithm, Bitcoin employs the conventional SHA-256 hashing algorithm. Litecoin, on the other hand, employs the Scrypt algorithm, which is relatively new. The fundamental difference between the two algorithms is that Scrypt requires less computational power, allowing average people to engage in less complicated mining.

Total coin limit and Halving: The supply of Bitcoin and Litecoin is limited. Bitcoin has a total limit of 21 million coins, while Litecoin has a limit of 84 million. No more coins will be minted after these limits are reached. The reward generated by miners (those who validate transactions on the blockchain) has been doubled in order to reduce the quantity of new coins issued, resulting in scarcity in the circulating supply. Every 210,000 blocks, Bitcoin block rewards are halved, while every 840,000 blocks, Litecoin block rewards are halved.

I made a picture design using Canva, in the picture the difference between Bitcoin and Litecoin are listed in a tabular form.

Trading and Storing Litecoin

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Just like all other cryptocurrency, Litecoin can be traded on crypto exchanges for fiat currency or other crypto.

There are numerous exchanges where Litecoin can be traded, you can check out your local exchanges or check out most of the popular exchange like Binance, Houbi,Bittrex and so on. You can check the litecoin.com to see the platform where you can buy Litecoin. Or check Coinmarketcap to check the list of exchanges where Litecoin can be traded.

Storing Litecoin

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Litecoin can be stored in Mobile wallet, Desktop wallet, lightening wallet. You can check the website litecoin.com to see the list of wallets where you can store Litecoin.

Thank you for reading!

REFERENCES

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Luno.com

Coinmarketcap.com

uk.advfn.com