Absolutely always popular thing became the reason for the appearance of its analogues. And very often the analogues are better than the original. This trend has also befallen the cryptocurrency industry. The strong and rapid growth of Bitcoin has led to the creation of alternative cryptocurrencies. It should be noted that Bitcoin itself is based on blockchain development. New currencies are created on the source code of Bitcoin, so they are considered forks of it. Now there are more than 1500 types of cryptocurrencies, but some of them are very popular (Ethereum, Litecoin), while others have not found it yet.
Litecoin (LTC) cryptocurrency was developed by Charles Lee in 2011. In his project, the developer tried not only to preserve all the advantages of Bitcoin cryptocurrency, but also to strengthen them, to eliminate existing errors . Already 2 years after its creation, Litecoin was rightly considered the main reserve digital currency after Bitcoin. And in 2016 it became the second most expensive and largest cryptocurrency, surpassing many existing altcoins.
Litecoin is one of the forks of Bitcoin and has a free open source algorithm which is developed under the MIT/X11 license. However, Litecoin is very different from Bitcoin.
Although Litecoin has similar characteristics to Bitcoin (transparency, complete anonymity, availability and decentralization), it is still a currency independent of the crypto world. Litecoin has the following properties and differences:
All crypto transactions are carried out using special email addresses. If a Bitcoin address always starts with the numbers 1,3 and consists of 27-34 characters, then the Litecoin address starts with the letter L and contains 33 characters.
Both cryptocurrencies have a limited version, that is, the volume of coins in circulation is initially known. For Bitcoin, the issue limit is 21 million coins, but for Litecoin – 84 million. Experts predict that 3/4 of all LTC coins will be mined by 2020.
In mining, Litecoin uses the scrypt hash function as proof of work, and SHA-256 is used for Bitcoin mining.
Litecoin is mined 4 times faster than Bitcoin. It takes about 2.5 minutes to generate a 25 LTC block, while a BTC block takes 10 minutes. That is, at the same time, you can process a lot more information and get more accurate and relevant profitability data.
One of the most important advantages of Litecoin over Bitcoin is its high degree of protection against hacking. Since new blocks in Litecoin are generated 4 times faster than in Bitcoin, cyber crooks therefore have 4 times less time to carry out a hacker attack. Therefore, the high speed of information processing within the Litecoin network works against fraudsters. The popularity of cryptocurrency also plays an important role. LTC today costs 90 times less than BTC, so the main blow of cyberattacks falls on Bitcoin.
The outlook always affects the choice of a particular coin, and here Litecoin definitely wins over Bitcoin. While powerful and expensive BTC attracts attention primarily as a storage medium, LTC, due to its speed and low cost, can be used as a universal payment solution. Many people who want to buy litecoin with paypal , tend to use a decentralized or P2P exchange. And further, the more the speed of operations will play a more important role. This suggests that Litecoin is moving in the right direction.
