What is Litecoin?

Litecoin (LTC) is a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that was released on October 7th, 2011 and went live on October 13th, 2011.

The silver to Bitcoins gold.

Bitcoins little brother that doesnt get out much.

These are just a few of the things you might hear being tossed around when talking about Litecoin. At first glance, Litecoin doesnt garner much respect as a top 10 market cap cryptocurrency.

However, once you get into the weeds, Litecoin presents an extremely useful and interesting application of the original Bitcoin blockchain.

For all the flak Litecoin gets, its easy to overlook what it actually is, and what functions it serves.

Litecoin was founded by former Google employee Charlie Lee. It was one of the first forks of the Bitcoin core client. It was proposed as a solution to some of the bottlenecks and scalability issues with Bitcoin, most notably the number of transactions that could be processed within a given time.

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The edge Litecoin has over Bitcoin is that the payment transaction costs are extremely low, and it is capable of facilitating payments around 4x as fast.

Litecoin originally started gathering attention during its explosive growth in November 2013, where it saw a near 15x spike in price. This jump in price, however, was short-lived and Litecoin hovered around the $4 per LTC range for about two years. It wasnt until May 2017 that it started to pick up steam again during a time where generally all cryptocurrencies experienced massive growth.

Litecoin has also been relatively innovative, adopting new technologies such as Segregated Witness and carrying out the first Lightning Network transaction that sent 0.00000001 LTC from Zurich, Switzerland to San Francisco, USA in under a single second.

Theres a reason Litecoin receives a lot of comparisons to Bitcoin. Except for a handful of minor distinctions, Litecoin serves the exact same purpose as Bitcoin. After all, it was one of the first Bitcoin forks.

Comparing Litecoin to Bitcoin not only makes sense from a convenience point of view, but it also lets us zone in what makes it different at a technological level. Litecoin is meant to be used as peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and is actually able to accomplish the same job Bitcoin does at a faster and cheaper rate.

Transaction confirmation speed plays a huge role in how quickly a currency gets adopted. Bitcoin confirmations usually take around ten minutes and have been steadily increasing with periods hitting as high as 2,548 minutes. Litecoins network is able to confirm transactions at a much quicker rate.

Litecoins verification period lasts a fixed 2.5 minutes. For every individual Bitcoin block that gets confirmed, four Litecoin blocks of equal size get confirmed.

The cost of sending any denomination of Litecoin costs around $0.09, whereas Bitcoin currently hovers around $5.00. This is an immediate advantage Litecoin has over Bitcoin for small transactions, since splitting a $10 Uber with a friend doesnt make sense for most people if you have to pay $5.00 on top of that. Litecoin offers the option to pay for everyday goods without high fees that will start adding up very quickly.

One of Litecoins goals is to distribute hash power more evenly than Bitcoins network. The problem that Litecoins founder Charlie Lee wanted to address was how Bitcoins hash power was largely distributed among mining pools, groups of miners, and generally a much smaller (and less decentralized) subset of miners. Litecoin aims to keep the hashing power decentralized.

Litecoins mining also keeps transaction fees relatively low due to the inherently higher total supply. There can only be 21 million Bitcoins existence, whereas there can be up to 84 million Litecoins. This matters because it makes mining less competitive, and the more competitive mining gets, the higher the transaction fees.

Whereas Bitcoin is near hitting some pretty serious scalability issues due to its high transaction fees, Litecoin is able to churn out block after block and retain its lower transaction costs. Granted, not as many people are using Litecoin as they are Bitcoin and Litecoin could theoretically end up dealing with the same scalability issues if it were to experience proportionate growth and usage, but that simply just isnt the case today.

Litecoin also uses the Scrypt hashing algorithm that utilizes much less processing power than the Bitcoin SHA256 hashing algorithm. Placing a higher emphasis on utilizing high-speed RAM, Litecoin makes it much less possible for a single player (or small collective group of big players) to dominate the mining world.

Fundamental Non-Technical Differences

Its important to also look at the differences in how both Bitcoin and Litecoin came about.

Bitcoins founders origins are relatively shrouded in mystery. Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of Bitcoins founder, is essentially relegated to legend and myth.

Litecoins founder, on the other hand, has been publicly available and active in the community. You can find Charlie Lee on Linkedin or on Twitter, as @SatoshiLite. After working at Google and founding Litecoin, he also worked on the engineering side at Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.

Personally, I much rather prefer Lees accessible and open nature to the mysterious secretive Satoshi, and the fact that Lee is capable of making light (Lite) of the situation is very humanizing.

Additionally, youd be hard pressed to find any serious claims or illusions of grandeur within the Litecoin camp. Its meant to make cryptocurrency accessible and usable for everyone and is perfectly fine with taking a back-seat role to Bitcoin.

Well, the fact that Litecoin can hold its own weight when it comes to having a legitimate use case says a lot, especially in a cryptocurrency world with over 700+ alt-coins with dubious purposes.

It does, after all, hold a market cap of upwards of $3 billion. That doesnt just happen by dumb luck.

When compared to Bitcoin, which has a market cap about 33x bigger, Litecoin does pose several advantages. As listed above, its capable of offering users lower transaction fees, faster transaction processing times, a more decentralized mining network, and its founder even throws out the occasional zinger on Twitter. These advantages technically make Litecoin a better coin for the vast majority of small transactions.

However, to be fair, Litecoin hasnt been pushed to its limits because there simply arent that many people using it. For the time being, Litecoin does exactly what it was created to do: offer low-cost, speedy transactions in a way that Bitcoin couldnt.

As is, Litecoin is simply another cryptocurrency that just so happened to prove its use case as a low-cost decentralized peer-to-peer payment method.

Litecoin was never made to go head to head with Bitcoin, but its technological advantages do pose somewhat of a threat. While it might be theoretically better than Bitcoin, Bitcoin has already run off with the network effect of rapidly onboarding a much larger and active user base.

Bitcoin also has the benefit of being a near household name by now, whereas Litecoin is much more obscure (especially with hot new tokens on the block like Ethereum). The vast majority of people who jump into the cryptocurrency world will buy Bitcoin first, and if their hunger isnt satiated, maybe some Litecoin and Ethereum.

While Litecoin seems to function very well for what its meant for, its interesting to postulate ideas about situations where it could experience massive user adoption and growth. There isnt much meat on the bones of whatever Litecoin loyalists are chewing on, but its worth noting that it could only be a matter of time before more people start to add Litecoin into their portfolios.

If, and this is a big IF, Bitcoin isnt able to address its scalability issues, Litecoin will be there to at least offer the same utility without having to pay high (and if Bitcoin reaches the climax of its scalability problems extremely high) fees.

Until then, Litecoin will likely hang around the top 10 market-cap cryptocurrencies, doing the same thing it always has.

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What is Litecoin? | A Beginner's Guide

Stratum Configuration

All of our stratum servers utilize GeoIP routing which automatically selects the server with the closest geographical proximity to your mining operation, resulting in optimal latency.

Login using your wallet address as username. An optional workername can be appended to your address separated by a dot character. Leave the password blank.

Static difficulty: To mine with a static (fixed) difficulty simply use d=xxx as password in your miner configuration where xxx denotes your preferred difficulty.

Before you can start to mine you need to create a wallet. Although Litecoin is an entirely digital asset, you still need a place to store them. This is done in a digital wallet. There are multiple methods to obtain a wallet which vary by ease of use and the security they provide.

Official first-party Wallets for all major platforms are available from the Litecoin Website. These wallets are released and maintained by the Litecoin Team.

Another possibility is to create a wallet at LiteVault. Please make sure to immediately backup your wallet keys after creating a wallet. We recommend using a password store such as KeePass or 1Password for that.

For long-term storage of Litecoin you can create a paper wallet. A paper wallet is extremely secure if you guard your private key by storing it in a password vault such as KeePass or LastPass or printing it out and depositing the sheet in a real bank vault.

A hardware wallet is a special type of wallet which stores the user's private keys in a secure hardware device. Hardware wallets offer robust safety features for storing cryptographic assets and securing digital payments. Popular hardware wallets are the Ledger Nano S and the Trezor.

There are multiple digital currency exchanges you can register with. Registering with an exchange allows you to create a wallet on the exchange for every currency the exchange supports.

Popular exchanges are: Binance, Bittrex, Poloniex, Kraken, Bitfinex and HitBTC.

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Litecoin Mining Pool (LTC) | Coinfoundry

What is Litecoin? A Basic Beginners Guide. Litecoin has taken the world by storm.

As more and more people are embracing the world of cryptocurrency, people are looking for investment opportunities outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Litecoin clearly looks like a popular choice.

Consider this: The price of litecoin has increased by 7,291% from the beginning of 2017! In comparison, bitcoin only increased by 1731%.

Image Credit: Coin Market Cap

That graph is scary!

Anyway, in this guide, we are going to do a deep dive on litecoin. Lets take a peek underneath the hood and see how it functions.

While the identity of the Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is shrouded in mystery, Litecoins creator Charlie Lee is very active on social media and his blog. Charlie Lee is an ex-Google employee who had the vision to create a lighter version of Bitcoin.

While Bitcoin was seen as gold and a store of value for long-term purposes, Litecoin was seen as the silver and a means of a transaction for cheaper and everyday purposes. So, on October 7 2011, litecoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub. The Litecoin Network went live on October 13 2011. It is basically a fork of the Bitcoin Core client.

Image Credit: Coindesk

If we are to truly understand Litecoin, comparisons with Bitcoin is a must. Litecoin, by their own admission, is a clone of Bitcoin.

So, what are some of the fundamental differences that set it apart from bitcoin? Lets explore them one by one.

One of the most fundamental and technical differences between the two is their mining procedure. Both use Proof-of-work consensus mechanism. Proof-of-work is pretty straightforward to understand.

The miners use their computational power to solve extremely hard cryptographic puzzles. The puzzle solving needs to be extremely hard, if it is simple then miners will keep mining blocks and drain out the entire bitcoin supply.

However, while the puzzle solving part is difficult, checking to see if the solution of the puzzle is correct or not should be simple.

And that, in a nutshell, is proof of work.

Now, both bitcoin and litecoin go about this a little differently.

Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 hashing algorithm for its mining purposes. Before long, miners discovered that they could exponentially increase their mining power by joining together and forming mining pools via parallel processing.

In parallel processing, program instructions are divided among multiple processors. By doing this, the running time of that program decreases greatly and that is basically what the mining pools are doing.

The SHA 256 puzzles require a lot of processing power, and that gave rise to specialized application-specific integrated circuits aka ASICs. The only purpose that these ASICs served was bitcoin mining.

These mining pools would basically have an entire powerplant of ASICs designed specifically for bitcoin mining.

So, to combat these issues, Litecoin uses the Scrypt algorithm.

Scrypt was originally named s-crypt however it is pronounced as script. While this algorithm does, in fact, utilize the SHA 256 algorithm, its calculations are way more serialized than the SHA-256 in bitcoin. As such, parallelizing the calculations is not possible.

What does this mean?

Suppose we have two processes A and B.

In bitcoin, it will be possible for the ASICs to do A and B together at the same time by parallelizing them.

However, in Litecoin, you will need to do A and then B serially. If you try to parallelize them, the memory required becomes way too much too handle.

Scrypt is called a memory hard problem since the main limiting factor isnt the raw processing power but the memory. This is specifically the reason why parallelization becomes an issue. Running 5 memory hard processes in parallel requires 5 times as much memory. Now, of course there can be devices manufactured with tons of memory in it, but two factors mitigate this effect:

Scrypt has been deliberately designed to make sure that mining is accessible and democratized as possible. However, recently companies like Zeus and Flower Technology have managed to create Scrypt ASICs. This would, unfortunately, mean the demise of their dream of democratized mining.

Average block mining speed in Litecoin is 2.5 mins when compared to bitcoins 10. This graph shows the block creation time for litecoin:

Image Credit: Bitinfocharts

Because of network congestion and slow block mining times, the median time waiting time for transactions can fluctuate up to 29 mins!

Image Credit: Blockchain.info

This feature is extremely useful for merchants who need to do a lot of mini-transactions per day. Using litecoin, they can get two confirmations within 5 mins while just one confirmation in Bitcoin will take at least 10 mins.

Another major advantage of the faster block creation time is the variance in miner rewards. Since the time between blocks is so small, more and more miners get the opportunity to mine blocks and earn the mining rewards. What this means is that the mining rewards should theoretically be more well-distributed in Litecoin and, by extension, it should be more decentralized.

However, there are some disadvantages that come along with the faster transaction speed.

Firstly, since the block creation time is so low, it leads to the formation of more orphaned blocks.

What exactly are orphaned blocks?

Mining, in every sense, is a competition between miners. You have a bunch of miners and pools desperately trying to mine the next block that will be added to the chain. There have been instances when more than one miner was able to come up with a blockchain which could be added the chain.

In situations like these, the network decides which block is to be added next. The other block then proceeds to become an orphan i.e. a perfectly legitimate block which wont have any transactions in it

In litecoin, since the downtime between the blocks is so low, the chance of miners mining orphaned blocks increases exponentially. Orphaned blocks are just a drain on the system.

Secondly, there is an immense strain on the blockchain. Look at the number of transactions happening in the litecoin chain.

Image Credit: BitInfoCharts

Now, while it is true that litecoin was made specifically for transaction volume, it still puts immense strain and clogs up the blockchain.

Litecoin solved this problem to the great extent by introducing Segwit. We have covered Segwit in great detail before. In here we are just going to give you a brief overview of what it is. Before we continue, a huge shoutout to Professor Donald J Patterson and his Youtube channel djp3 for the explanation.

We are going to be using bitcoins example and script.

Following is what the transaction looks like in script form.

Suppose Alice wants to send 0.0015 BTC to Bob and in order to do so, she sends inputs which are worth 0.0015770 BTC. This is what the transaction detail looks like:

Image courtesy: djp3 youtube channel.

The first thing that you see:

Is the name of the Transaction aka the hash of the input and output value.

Vin_sz is the number of input data since Alice is sending the data using only one of her previous transactions, it is 1.

Vout_sz is 2 because the only outputs are Bob and the change.

This is the Input data:

See the input data? Alice is only using one input transaction.

Below the input data is her signature data.

Now, this signature data can cause 2 major problems:

So, thats where Segwit came up with a simple solution.

Sidechain as a concept has been in the bitcoin circles for quite some time now. The idea is very straightforward; you have a parallel chain which runs along with the main chain. The side chain will be attached to the main chain via a two-way peg.

This is what Blockstreams initial idea of the Bitcoin blockchain and a sidechain looked like:

What Dr. Wiulle thought of was simple why not add a feature to this sidechain? This feature would include the signature data of all transactions, separating it from the main chain in the process. This feature would be called Segregated Witness aka Segwit.

This is what a block would look like once it implements segwit:

So by removing the signature data from the transactions, it was killing two birds with one stone, the block space got emptier and the transactions became malleable free.

Since litecoin implemented Segwit, the load on their chain has considerably decreased.

Image Credit: Charlie Lee twitter

On July 2015, the bitcoin network was subjected to a flood attack.

A flood attack is an attack where the network is flooded with spam transactions, which basically fills up the blocks and clogs up the blockchain.

In this particular attack the network was congested with thousands of transactions and at one point there were around 80,000 transactions in the mempool!

So how does Litecoin save itself from flood attacks? According to Charlie Lee, they do it by making the attack as economically infeasible as possible. This is what he said in his interview with cointelegraph.

The reason why it is immune to this attack is because it was attacked in a similar fashion (though to a much smaller degree) years ago. I noticed this flaw in Bitcoin and patched it in Litecoin.

The fix implemented in Litecoin is just to charge the sender a fee for each tiny output he creates. For example, in this specific attack, the sender is charged one fee for sending to 34 tiny outputs of 0.00001 BTC. With the fix, that fee would be 34 times as much. So it would cost the attacker a lot more to perform the spam attack. The concept is fairly simple: the sender should pay for each tiny output he/she creates.

One of the most exciting features that litecoin is introducing is the Atomic Swap.

Atomic swap enables a cross-chain exchange of coins without the need of a third party. Eg. If Alice had 1 bitcoin and she wanted 100 litecoins in return, she would normally have to go to an exchange and pay certain fees to get it done.

With the implementation of Atomic Swaps, suppose Alice has 1 BTC and Bob has 100 LTC, they could simply swap their coins with each other, without going to through an exchange and paying any unnecessary transaction fees.

Atomic swaps work by utilizing Hashed timelock contracts.

Hashed timelock contracts or HTLCs are one of the most convenient applications of the payment channels. In fact, the Lightning Protocol is an implementation of the HTLC.

So, what is an HTLC? Till now we have seen channels which use timelocks. An HTLC extends that by introducing Hashlocks along with the timelocks.

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What is Litecoin? A Basic Beginners Guide - Blockgeeks

Litecoin is still languishing in selling pressure, although other assets in the market are showing signs of recovery. Bitcoin (BTC), for example, is sitting comfortably above $6,300 after testing the lows at $6,100. Monero (XLM) is among the biggest gainers on the day with a 4.7% jump but it is still struggling with the $100 resistance. IOTA (IOT) is up over 2% while Bitcoin Cash is trading at $595 with a 1% rise in value.

Litecoin price analysis

Litecoin, on the other hand, staged a recovery during the trading session yesterday from the lows marginally above $61.00. The price retraced above $63.00 reacted lower short of $64.00. However, there was another pullback on Thursday (Asian trading hours) where LTC/USD broke the resistance at $64.00, although the trend turned bearish shortly after. Litecoin has been correcting lower since then in addition to retesting the support at $61.00.

A bounce occurred taking the price above the 23.6% Fib level from the last high at $64.13 to a low of $61.56 at $62.18. The rising selling pressure is limiting gains and LTC/USD is on yet another slide towards the critical support. To prevent further declines, the buyers must hold their ground above $61.00, otherwise, further a break down below $60.00 is likely to follow in the near-term. On the flip side, the 23.6% Fibo (broken support) will limit the gains. The trendline resistance is also present around $62.5 supply zone. The 100 SMA is still maintaining above the short-term 100 SMA indicating that the sellers still have an upper hand.

In other news related to Litecoin, the founder Charlie Lee has today told his followers on Twitter that while the market is in the bear momentum, it is the best time to push for adoption. He said this while announcing Litecoin SMS Payment feature that is coming soon. Lee says:

A bear market is the best time for people to work on adoption.

Litecoin is working on an application it is calling lite.im, that will enable anybody with a mobile phone to receive and funds.

With lite.im anyone with an SMS-capable mobile phone can send and receive funds, anywhere in the world and without the need for a centralized authority. Litecoin was created as a tool for financial freedom. With lite.im, were extending that freedom to everyone.

This new feature for Litecoin seeks to bring financial inclusivity to all people around the world. It will work in cases where access to acrypto wallet is not possible. In addition to that, lite.im will come in handy in situations where internet connection is poor or if a user lives in a country where the government censors the internet or bans cryptocurrency use.

LTC/USD 15-minutes chart

Continued here:

Litecoin price analysis: Balancing at the edge of a cliff ...

Regardless of what people say, Bitcoin is always the first to scoop the headlines, virtually taking the lead in both good and what seems to be wrong. The early Bitcoiners are smiling to the bank whenever you criticize of what is not going right in bitcoin.

Last month, a cryptocurrency which regarded its self as the silver to bitcoins gold made an all-time high of 2000% in the market capitalization. That cryptocurrency is called Litecoin. The Litecoin team should be seeing it as gold not silver after such an unprecedented surge in value. With quickest transaction time in cryptocurrency blockchain, improved network and less volatility, Litecoin should be aiming to be among the top two in cryptocurrency market.

TEAM

Litecoin was founded by Mr. Charlie Lee, a cryptographic expert who brought his wealth of experience to make Litecoin, what it is today.

He is being assisted by other Directors in the persons of Mr. Xinxi Wang and Mr.Franklyn Richards. I will not forget to mention these two developers who have worked tirelessly to make Litecoin, the fastest blockchain transaction platform. They are losh11 and fancycedar.

Practical Uses of Litecoin

Mining Of Litecoin

Mining LTC is cost-effective because of low computational power it uses.It can be mined in minor hardware or computers. Litecoin uses Script Proof of Work to verify transactions, and every transaction produces new blocks which are added into the Litecoin blockchain. A reward is given to the miner whose effort in solving the computational puzzle led to the addition of more blocks.

Litecoin and Bitcoin are different in the usage of algorithms when hashing. Bitcoin uses the popular SHA-256 which is known for its complexity and high computational power consumption. On the other hand, Litecoin uses a script which is a memory based algorithm and uses less computational power to mine.

Notes to Invest

Litecoin is the cheapest amongst the top three: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, with the price hovering around $70.I think, what drives Litecoin presently is the relatively low price, and I feel, they management should take advantage of that.

LTC is a currency, and it doesnt act like a stock or bond, When buying shares of Litecoin, you are only swapping your money with Litecoin currency. Litecoin has the potentials to hit it big in the coming years based on the steady increase(In July 2013, 1 LTC = $2.80 and now,1LTC= $70) in the market cap,

MUST READ!

You need to note that, cryptocurrency investment is speculative and unpredictable, and it involves risks. The market is full of uncertainty, susceptible to attack and capital loss. There are many parameters one needs to check before investing. Dont invest only based on what you have read here, but invest based on the fact that, you have sought advice.I wish you success!

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Litecoin - Litecoin Price Live, LTC Value, Mining, Wallet ...

Litecoin is the worlds fourth most popular cryptocurrency by market cap, after bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple. Find out everything you need to know about the global decentralized currency today.

Litecoin is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency that works in a similar way to Ethereum and bitcoin. Its a peer-to-peer internet currency that allows for instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world. Its a decentralized payment network that isnt managed by any central authorities. The network, like other blockchains, is secured by mathematics. Individuals can control their own finances without relying on third parties like banks or traditional financial institutions.

The Litecoin.org website describes how the currency doesnt want to work as an alternative to bitcoin, but as a complementary force:

With substantial industry support, trade volume and liquidity, Litecoin is a proven medium of commerce complementary to bitcoin.

One of the first advantages that Litecoin has over bitcoin is its higher transaction volume: the blockchain generates blocks more frequently, which means transactions can be processed more quickly (2.5 minutes as opposed to 10 minutes).

Lets take a closer look at some of Litecoins most prominent features.

Litecoin offers all of the following features:

You can find general information as well as a list of services and exchanges that support Litecoin. General information can be found at the Litecoin Wiki, while up-to-the-minute network stats can be found at Litecoin Block Explorer Charts. Meanwhile, the source code for Litecoin Core is all open and available to anyone through GitHub.

Like most members of the cryptocurrency community, Litecoin is open source software. The software project was released under the MIT/X11 license, which means users have the power to run, modify, and copy the software and to distribute, at your option, modified versions of the software. Litecoin has a transparent release process that facilitates the independent verification of binaries and their corresponding source code.

The Litecoin blockchain can handle higher transaction volume than bitcoin. Thats because the Litecoin blockchain has more frequent block generation. The network supports more transactions without the need to modify the software in the future. As a result, merchants enjoy faster confirmation times while still having the ability to wait for more confirmations when selling bigger ticket items.

Like all good cryptocurrencies, your Litecoins can be encrypted. You can secure your wallet, view transactions, and check your account balance using the Litecoin projects own wallet. Before you spend Litecoins, however, youll need to enter your password.

Mining rewards are a crucial part of any blockchain. With the Litecoin blockchain, miners are currently awarded (as of June 2017) with 25 new Litecoins per block. That amount gets cut in half about once every 4 years (or every 840,000 blocks). The Litecoin network is scheduled to produce 84 million Litecoins, which is 4 times as many currency units as bitcoin.

Litecoin and bitcoin are two very similar cryptocurrencies. Litecoin was originally based on a bitcoin fork, so the two have a common foundation. However, there are some key differences between Litecoin and bitcoin, including:

Litecoin processes blocks every 2.5 minutes, instead of the 10 minutes taken by bitcoins blockchain. There are pros and cons to this processing time: theres a higher probability of orphaned blocks, for example. On the positive side of things, Litecoins faster processing time means a greater resistance to a double spending attack over the same period as bitcoin. However, total work done is also a consideration so if the network has 10 times less computing work done per block than bitcoin, then bitcoins confirmation is about 10 times harder to reverse even though the Litecoin network can add confirmation blocks at a rate four times faster.

Litecoin uses Scrypt in its proof of work algorithm, which is a sequential memory-hard function requiring asymptotically more memory than an algorithm that isnt memory-hard. That generally means you need more memory in your miners compared to blockchains that dont use Scrypt.

The Litecoin blockchain plans to release 84 million Litecoins in total, or four times as many currency as the total supply of bitcoin.

The use of Scrypt was an interesting choice. The purpose of using Scrypt was to allow miners to mine both bitcoin and Litecoin at the same time. It was also chosen as a way to avoid giving an advantage to GPU, FPGA, and ASIC miners over CPU miners. The other component of using the Scrypt algorithm is that FPGA and ASIC devices made for mining Litecoin tend to be more complicated to create and more expensive to produce than they are for bitcoin, which uses SHA-256. This is because the Scrypt hashing scheme is more memory intensive, and ASICs and FPGAs have higher memory requirements as a result.

Litecoin was introduced to the internet in October 2011. The first release occurred on October 7, 2011, via an open source client released on GitHub. Litecoins first release (0.8.5.1) was a fork of the Bitcoin Core client created by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee. The key improvement over Bitcoin was its decreased block generation time (2.5 minutes, instead of 10 minutes with bitcoin).

Other advantages included the increased maximum number of coins, different hashing algorithm (Scrypt-based, instead of SHA-256), and a slightly modified GUI.

Litecoin remained a lesser-known altcoin until around November 2013, when it exploded with growth. The aggregate value of Litecoin surged by 100% within a 24 hour period during that month. By the end of November 2013, Litecoin had a market cap of $1 billion. In early 2017, the currencys market cap stood at around $1.5 billion. As of June 2017, Litecion has a market cap over $2 billion, with a price of around $30 to $40 per token.

Litecoin has also distinguished itself from the cryptocurrency community for other reasons. In May 2017, Litecoin became the first of the top 5 cryptocurrencies (by market cap) to adopt Segregated Witness. Later that month, the company completed the first Lightning Network transaction through Litecoin, when it transferred 0.00000001 LTC from Zurich to San Francisco in under one second.

You can contact the Litecoin project development team at [emailprotected]

Litecoin has remained steady as the worlds fourth most popular cryptocurrency (by market cap). The only currencies ahead of Litecoin in market cap are bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple. With a market cap of over $2 billion, Litecoin has grown from a small bitcoin fork project into a giant of the digital economy. You can learn more about Litecoin by visiting Litecoin.org today.

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Litecoin Review - Charlie Lee's Open Source P2P LTC ...

Observers and experts have noticed growing unrest, uncertainty and frustration in the cryptomarket. Even though several coins have been witnessing a price drop/stagnation over the last three months, the industry is attempting to find its place as a technology that had promised innovation but had fallen short on delivering that.

This article highlights the three ways in which Litecoin can grow in 2018 amidst the growing dissatisfaction with blockchain and crypto-derived currencies. The landscape for cryptocurrency beyond this year is obviousthe focus has to switch from price speculation to usability and real-world application. It is important that functionality supersedes profit potential.

Recognition for Litecoin utility

Litecoin has struggled to differentiate itself from Bitcoin for years, partly because of a compliant marketing slant by founder Charlie Lee. But within the past two months, the narrative has started altering. More people are coming to acknowledge Litecoin as a cryptocurrency with real use. The fundamentals of this currencytransaction speeds, fees, and ability to scale through Segwit and lightning networkhave all proved to be superior to Bitcoin at this point. The attributes that make Litecoin a better option that Bitcoin can be subjective. But on grounds of what each currency is attempting to do in terms of technology (be it a digital, decentralized form of money for the transaction) Litecoin has outclassed all other coins. Scaling issues may come to cripple the Litecoins network someday the same way it has with Bitcoin, but the currency has become synonymous with sending and receiving crypto. Most people, when sending Bitcoin from one exchange to another, convert to Litecoin first in order to capitalize on the cost savings and transaction speeds that the latter offers.

Both coins, despite being mirror images in potential use, play a significant role in the expanding cryptocurrency landscape. The shortcomings of Bitcoin are distorting the growth of the cryptocurrency. Until the issues associated with scaling are solved, Litecoin offers a better alternative to the culture and development team of the cryptocurrency is committed to the superior quality utility of Litecoin as a transacting token. Litecoin has continued to be on the forefront of innovations in crypto technology and will continue to lead the way as a transacting currency. Litecoin has had Segwit longer and is very likely to be the first to implement Lightning Network or some other innovative solution.

Adoption of LitePay

Even though there has been a backlash towards LitePay from certain quarters, LitePay is a step in the right direction. While the debit card has been delayed for some time, it still serves as a two-way payment LTC processor that allows both sides of the transaction equation to participate in cryptocurrency. This equips Litecoin with ample marketing and growth potential. Merchants using LitePay instantly become sources of advertisement for LitePay. With the advent of a debit card, Litecoin spenders have an opportunity to elucidate to their friends and colleagues, the potential use for the cryptocurrency. Thus LitePay acts as an immediate and effective avenue for increasing revenue for Litecoin by tapping into a completely new consumer base. It also gives real crypto enthusiasts to use their currency.

Erosion of Bitcoin brand name

For those enthused by the technology and the possibility of cryptocurrency, whether for political, social or innovative reasons, Litecoin becomes a natural anchor. Litecoin is a fork of the original Bitcoin code, with alterations to expand the utility of the currency. The most remarkable features of Litecoin have been the drastically reduced fees and speedier confirmation times. Even the allure surrounding the mysterious Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto is not that dissimilar than the present state of Litecoin. That is because Charlie Lee has completely detached himself from a financial stake in his project by selling his entire holding of Litecoin. This gives Litecoin a strong developer, advocate, and leader without the uncertainty of motivation determining its performance. Charlie Lee is growing Litecoin, regardless of its price. Even though investors might find the financial incentive to be a bit lacking to grow Litecoin, but in terms of terms of strategic collaborations with major players like Amazon, the removal of a central authoritarian figure with the potential to become a billionaire is proving to be a positive thing for the Litecoin brand.

While most of the major cryptocurrencies have been at their lowest points since October 2017, Litecoin has managed to gain a step over Ethereum and is just below Ripple in terms of Google trend results. The usability of Litecoin over Bitcoin is evident. Litecoin offers more clarity regarding decentralization and is more representative of cryptocurrency to enthusiasts than XRP, which is deemed by many as a tool for the financial sector. All of these factors have contributed to the growing popularity of Litecoin and could lead to an increase in the further rush for it. The possibility of Litecoin to nab the top spot of popularity away from Bitcoin has bolstered.

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Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Global Coin Report and/or its affiliates, employees, writers, and subcontractors are cryptocurrency investors and from time to time may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency and read our full disclaimer.

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3 Ways Litecoin (LTC) Will Grow In 2018

Litecoin vs Bitcoin

Litecoin vs Bitcoin. Which one is better? Everyone from qualified economists to Redditors have been comparing the two since Litecoin came into existence in 2011.

The conversation not only discusses these coins individually and against each other, but also pertains to a more complex debate over what it takes to become a successful cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin is the clear poster-child for the crypto-community. However, Litecoin has developed a user base from those who are skeptical of some aspects of Bitcoin but still strongly believe in the future of cryptos.

While Bitcoin and Litecoin have some slight technical differences, they both set out to accomplish the same thing: transfer value using cryptographic principles. Yet once the two coins face off, its clear why Bitcoin has come out the winner.

Note:On mobile devices, swipe and scroll table.

We can compare cryptocurrencies from many angles, but the most popular method is looking at their market capitalization. Market cap is essentially the amount of currency on the market (usually in U.S. dollars). Bitcoin is currently ranked number one with a market cap of over $56 billion, and Litecoin is ranked fifth with a market cap of $2.56 billion. Bitcoin is the standard cryptocurrency that most users and platforms prefer. You might be thinking, So why are we talking about Litecoin? Its market cap may be a tiny sliver of cake compared to Bitcoins $45 billion, but its one of the few altcoins with an active user base and legitimate credentials.

(You can view current market caps in the table above to see how theyve changed since this article was published.)

Litecoin functions like Bitcoin: It is an online payment system that uses cryptocurrency instead of a national currency like U.S, dollars, Bitcoin and Litecoin carry out transactions using bitcoin and Litecoin respectively. As cryptocurrencies, they both garner a similar community and image, as well as rely on similar cryptographic principles.

Bitcoin was released in 2009 as the first cryptocurrency. Litecoin launched only two years later in 2011 but has been sprinting to catch up to Bitcoin ever since.

Litecoins developers have stated that their intention was to create a silver to Bitcoins gold. Although Litecoin tech is arguably better than Bitcoins, it was born inferior.

The two cryptos may seem similar, but they are actually quite distinct in their market acceptance and technical mechanics.

In the following four points, we will discuss what makes each crypto distinct. You will come to understand how Litecoins arguably superior algorithm will likely forever be subordinate due to Bitcoins pervasive network.

With a market cap roughly 22.5x the size of Litecoins, Bitcoins overwhelming popularity makes it the obvious choice for the crypto investment community.

According to Google Trends, Litecoin hardly holds a candle to Bitcoins search popularity. For scale, 100 indicates the peak popularity a term. A value of 50 means the term is half as popular, and a value of 0 means the term was less than 1% as popular as the peak.

Since cryptos are viewed as inherently risky, Bitcoin seems relatively stable with its extremely high market cap. Sure, Bitcoins price can still be incredibly volatile. Yet while a mere $1 billion loss would decimate Litecoins market cap in half, Bitcoin would need a crash of $40 billion in market cap for effects to be just as catastrophic.

Despite all this, Litecoin is still fairly relevant in the crypto community.

Many crypto traders account for the total number of coins each cryptocurrency is programmed to make. Bitcoin is capped at 21 million coins, but Litecoin can make up to 84 million coins.

Both coins technically still have a long ways to go until they hit their cap limits but it remains a concern because of the price volatility expected as the coins reach their maximums. Bitcoin currently has roughly 16.5 million coins in circulation, and Litecoin has about 52 million. This means Bitcoin is currently at 78% of its maximum, and Litecoin is about 61% of its maximum. If Bitcoin nears its maximum coin amount first, then Litecoin may pick up more traction with traders buying into Litecoin to avoid the Bitcoin volatility.

The above point in favor of Litecoin, however, is largely a misunderstanding: Since both Bitcoin and Litecoin can be divided into fractional amounts, the maximum coin shouldnt impact the value storage of either coin. For example, Bitcoin users can transfer as little as 0.00000001 bitcoins. The ability to accommodate more coins is then kaput.

Bitcoins average transaction confirmation time is a little over 9 minutes per transaction, whereas Litecoins is roughly 2.5 minutes per transaction. This makes Litecoins transactions roughly four times faster than Bitcoins, offering an attractive advantage for users who frequently conduct transactions, such as merchants .

Keep in mind that transactions technically occur instantaneously on both Bitcoin and Litecoin networks, but the transaction confirmation by other network participants does take some time. Waiting the full 9 minutes for a Bitcoin transaction or 2.5 minutes for a Litecoin transaction ensures the transaction was valid. Merchants can accept the transactions instantaneously without waiting for a confirmation, but they run the risk of becoming victim to a double spend attack.

This seemingly large advantage Litecoin has over Bitcoin, however, is minimized by third-party solutions that make instantaneous transactions more secure.

Long-term cryptocurrency users consider the technical components of Bitcoins and Litecoins different cryptographic algorithms when comparing the two.

Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm and Litecoin uses an algorithm called Scrypt. These algorithms determine the mining process for new coins. Miners confirm the transactions of other users, and are rewarded units of that currency in exchange.

Many consider Bitcoins SHA-256 algorithm more complex than Litecoins Scrypt, which therefore allows for a higher degree of parallel processing. Bitcoin miners have built sophisticated methods to mine bitcoins at a highly efficient rate. The most dominant method uses ASICsApplication-Specific Integrated Circuits. ASICs are essentially hardware systems (similar to CPUs) created purely to mine bitcoins.

The Bitcoin competition for mining is fierce due to the sheer amount of miners, as well as technical innovations such as the ASICs. New miners struggle to establish themselves without adequate computing power, capital to handle expenses, and the know-how to outcompete experienced competition.

Litecoin was largely created to appeal to miners who could no longer mine Bitcoin because their CPUs couldnt compete with ASICs. Scrypt is more accessible for new miners. It was designed to be less conducive to custom hardware solutions such as in ASIC-based mining. Scrypt, however, is not immune to the innovation and there is increasingly development that hinders the easy-access mining Scrypt was partially designed for.

While Litecoins efforts to make mining more accessible to everyone is a notable gesture that speaks volumes about the Litecoin community, it also pigeonholes itself into a niche. Instead of appealing to a massive community of people to achieve a network to contend with Bitcoins, Litecoin focused on minor differentiating factors. Litecoin essentially functions the same as Bitcoin and doesnt offer enough for users to convert from Bitcoin.

Its safe to assume that most crypto-traders, those responsible for the large crypto market caps, arent valuing tech over substantial profit. Litecoins value proposition simply sounds like another altcoin pitch to them. Less tech-savvy adopters hardly know what the mining process is like, let alone the difference between SHA-256 and Scrypt. So while Litecoins price has increased significantly over the past few months, it simply isnt as attractive as Bitcoins.

Litecoin additionally took a hard jab in the gut when Ethereum exploded onto the scene in early 2017 and knocked Litecoin down to the #4 market cap position. Ethereum has developed nearly 10x that of Litecoins market cap in a short amount of time.

Since Litecoins purpose initially was to be silver to Bitcoin gold, it really begs the question of whether it will ever be anything more than Bitcoins minion.

Litecoin technically has a superior algorithm but this is largely irrelevant, as Bitcoins popularity has cemented it as the gold standard for old and new crypto traders.

When it comes to cryptocurrency adoption, Bitcoin and Litecoin are in the same boat. Think of it this way: Bitcoin and Litecoin are both good guys. But Bitcoin is the main protagonist and Litecoin is the inferior supporting actor. Bitcoin is the Goku, Aragon, and Batman. Litecoin is the Vegeta, Boromir, and Harvey Dent. In the end, Bitcoin will likely end up in every sequel, while Litecoin is killed off due to lack of popularity.

An extensive user network is essential in the crypto community. No matter how hard Harvey Dent altcoins may try, even their technical superiority cant beat the popularity of the Batman Bitcoin .

Additionally, Bitcoins liquidity cannot be overlooked. The fact that cryptocurrencies tend to be very volatile plays a huge role in the minds of new users. Many new users start with Bitcoin because it offers stability and a large preexisting market.

The network effect ultimately determines which cryptos survive and as more users buy into Bitcoin, Litecoin will likely become increasingly obscure. Litecoins relevancy is debatable and its recent spikes in price are largely due to the current rise in cryptocurrency prices as a whole.

Its interesting to theorize situations where Litecoin could overtake Bitcoin. Litecoin loyalists cling to the fact that Litecoin is one of the only high-value value-exchange alternatives. In the unlikely case that any of Bitcoins potentially problematic features like its 21 million coin limit remain unaddressed and start to create substantial problems, people could shift towards Litecoin. However, the downfall of Bitcointhe flagship of the cryptocurrency worldcould spell doomsday for the cryptocurrency market at large.

Related

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Litecoin vs Bitcoin: The 2 Most Popular Digital Coins Compared

Just a month after LitePays untimely collapse, Litecoin has teamed up with a well-known wallet platform and a large South Korean cryptocurrency exchange.

Despite the disappointment of LitePays demise, TenX have announced Litecoin (LTC) support in on its wallet platform while South Koreas second biggest exchange Korbit launched Litecoin trading on 18 April.

It comes as a timely boon for the cryptocurrency and the Litecoin Foundation, which had been eagerly anticipating and supporting the development of LitePay - before it ceased operations without its product being launched in March.

TenX launched LTC on its wallet platforms without an official announcement last week, to ease the pressure on its systems while it finalized live testing.

Furthermore, TenX have stepped up and hope to provide a card service for Litecoin, one of the features LitePay had promised during its failed development:

We are also excited to announce a new partnership; we have reached out to, and are working with the Litecoin Foundation to introduce a co-branded card for which more information will be available soon. We hope to become the preferred payment platform for fans and owners of Litecoin.

Korbits support of Litecoin coincides with a slight uptrend in value since a recent low at the start of April. As per Coinmarketcap data, Litecoin is trading at $140.36.

Litecoin founder Charlie Lee celebrated the move on Twitter, highlighting the fact that hed try to get Korbit to support the cryptocurrency years ago:

LitePay promised to give users the ability to accept payments in Litecoin which facilitated an instantaneous conversion to fiat currency which could then be deposited to a conventional bank account in over 38 countries.

Furthermore LitePay was touting a 1 percent transaction fee, which it claimed would beat conventional credit card rates.

Souce: LitePay/Twitter

Unfortunately, none of this ever materialized, as Litecoin Foundation director of operations Keith Yong confirmed the news on March 26 that he had stopped development and would be selling the company.

Yong expressed his dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in an official announcement on the website.

The launch of the project was met with cautious optimism late in 2017 with an ambitious launch date set for Feb. 26 which has since come and gone.

For the public, things came undone when Litepay CEO Kenneth Asare opened himself to an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Reddit on March 17. What hed probably planned to be a candid public engagement for the project spelled the beginning of the end.

Seasoned cryptocurrency community members, made up of well-informed developers and the likes, tore into Asare as he struggled to answer a slew of questions about the project.

Particular sore points were a lack of transparency on the team, the privacy policy being copied from Coinbase as well as the fact that Asare would not share developer documentation.

One user, cdm9002 labelled Asares website a scam and challenged the LitePay CEO to convince him that his project was real.

Another user pointed out that the original privacy policy on the LitePay website was a verbatim copy from the Coinbase website, before this was amended:

I stand corrected. They changed their privacy policy. Up until very recently, it was a copy/paste from Coinbase but they replaced "Coinbase" with "LitePay".

For the Litecoin Foundation, alarm bells started ringing when the LitePay CEO asked for further funding for the project. Failing to disclose how initial funding had been spent, the NPO refused to assist with further investment according to Yong:

Prior to that, the foundation had approached Kenneth regarding his less than transparent nature with the company and to express our, and the communitys, concerns regarding his recent Reddit AMA.

It was at this time that Kenneth asked the foundation for more funds to continue operations. The foundation refused any further funding as he was unable to provide a satisfactory picture of where the money had been spent and refused to go into exact details about the company and show objective evidence to back up his statements.

Litecoin founder Charlie Lee also took to Twitter, apologising to the Litecoin and wider cryptocurrency community:

Cointelegraph reached out to Lee for comment, but the Litecoin founder declined to give any further thoughts on the matter.

There has been no official announcement outlining why Asare decided to pack up shop - but these factors seemed to have played a role:

While its not clear how much money Asare raised for the development of LitePay in total, Litecoin Foundation director Xinxi Wang is understood to have invested $50.000 into the project:

As Wang suggests, the monetary losses are far outweighed by the damage to Asares career in the wake of LitePays failure.

Given that the developer squandered the capital investment from Wang and the Litecoin Foundation, they werent about to keep handing out further investments.

While Charlie Lee said that a lack of due diligence was negligent on their part, Wang explained on Twitter that he felt Asares entrepreneurial track record gave the project credibility:

In Asares AMA session on Reddit, he claimed to have studied law before owning and operating a number of businesses in the late decade. This included an education infrastructure company that built a type of School Management System, a Construction Defect Claims Management company as well as a Collaborative Learning Social Network.

Litepays demise is no less saddening than any other business that has failed to live up to expectations but a slight consolation is the fact that it doesnt seem to have been an outright scam.

The project was not funding by an initial coin offering (ICO) which means plucky investors were saved from Asares abrupt decision to pack up shop.

Its a far cry from a number of ICOs that have ended up scamming people out of a lot money.

As ICORatings Brian Keen points out in a recent column on Cointelegraph, there have been a number of outrageous exit scams that have left investors out of pocket.

The likes of Plexcoin and its owner Dominic Lacroix set the bar pretty high in terms of how far some fraudsters are willing to go to steal from unsuspecting investors.

In that case, Lacroix nearly ran off with $15 mln, before the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stepped in and froze the accounts of the company. Lacroix ended up in prison before he could run off with the millions hed raised during the ICO.

Litepays downfall could be more closely attributed to the end of Ethereums Decentralized Autnomous Organisation (DAO) project in 2017.

The brainchild of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, the DAO project promised to create a revolutionary funding model for Decentralised Apps (DApps) on the Ethereum blockchain. The project was launched and raised $150 mln in Eth tokens.

However, shortly after its launch, hackers found an exploit in the code and stole $60 mln worth of ETH from the project. The theft prompted an investigation by the SEC - which ruled DAO tokens were in fact securities and had to abide by federal laws.

What was hailed as a revolutionary fundraising project for Ethereum DApps all but ended there and then, not unlike LitePay.

Both projects were highly anticipated by the wider cryptocurrency community and their unceremonious endings gave a stark reminder of how difficult life is on the precipice of technological advancement.

While LitePay floats away into the ether, TenX have thrust to the fore and could well be the next champion for Litecoin support.

Theyve already launched LTC support on their Android and iOS platforms. Theyre also planning to launch a TenX/Litecoin card. Tried and tested, TenX could step up to the plate and do what Litepay couldnt - only time will show.

Meanwhile Litecoin trading launched on Korbit is a boon for the cryptocurrency. South Korea is a cryptocurrency trading hub, and the appetite for virtual currencies is still voracious. Finally garnering support in South Korea could have positive ramifications for LTC.

A third party may be joining the fray, as online crypto-friendly currency account service Wirex hinted on Twitter that Litecoin support is being developed.

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Litecoin Courting TenX and Korbit - Just a Month after ...

Mining Calculator Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash and Monero

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Mining Calculator Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash and Monero

Investors who had the nerve and wherewithal to invest in cryptocurrencies early in 2017 and hold throughout the year were probably handsomely rewarded. Between the beginning and end of 2017, the aggregate cryptocurrency market cap gained almost $600 billion, which works out to an increase in value of more than 3,300%. For a single asset class, it might just be the greatest 12-month return we will see in our lifetimes.

Unfortunately, 2018 hasn't looked anything like the previous record-shattering year. After hitting an all-time market cap high of $835 billion on Jan. 7, cryptocurrencies pushed to lows that hadn't been seen since around Thanksgiving on March 17 ($274 billion). But it's not the drop itself that's necessarily the most attention-grabbing point. Instead, it's what's leading the crypto market cap significantly lower.

Image source: Getty Images.

Most folks would probably assume bitcoin is to blame. After all, bitcoin is the largest virtual coin by market cap, and frankly it's the only one most of the public has probably heard about. While bitcoin has indeed performed poorly, it's not been the driving force behind the recent collapse in crypto prices. That credit belongs to everything not named bitcoin.

You see, the fourth quarter of the previous year absolutely belonged to cryptocurrencies not named bitcoin. Having seen bitcoin tokens explode from less than $0.01 to $10,000 per token in under eight years had speculators throwing darts at dozens of virtual currencies in 2017, grasping for straws at what might be "the next bitcoin." As a result, many of bitcoin's chief rivals ran circles around it last year. Ethereum, which is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, increased in value by 9,383% in 2017, while Ripple and Litecoin, two other extremely popular digital currencies, surged by 35,564% and 5,260%, respectively. Meanwhile, bitcoin rose 1,364%.

This year has seen a complete reversal of the fourth-quarter 2017 trend. After hitting a high of $1,432 per Ether token on Jan. 13, Ethereum has pushed as low as $460, representing a loss in value of 68%. Ripple, which was unstoppable last year and hit an all-time high of $3.84 per XRP token on Jan. 3, has since seen its coin trade as low as $0.55 -- a decline of 86%. Even Litecoin, which in some circles is viewed as bitcoin's biggest rival, has plummeted from a peak of $375 on Dec. 19 to as low as $107 in early February.

Comparatively, bitcoin, which made up as little as 33% of the aggregate cryptocurrency market cap in mid-January, now comprises 44.4% of the crypto market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.com. That's close to a three-month high. In short, even though bitcoin is falling, it's dropping far less than its peers.

Image source: Getty Images.

That prompts the question: What the heck is wrong with Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin?

Taking a broader look at bitcoin's biggest rivals, two factors stand out as being responsible for their considerable declines in recent months.

First, there's the simple fact that competition within the digital currency and blockchain space has exploded. Blockchain is the digital, distributed, and decentralized ledger often underpinning cryptocurrencies that's responsible for recording all transactions without the need for a financial intermediary, like a bank.

Last summer, there were around 900 virtual currencies that investors could buy. As of March 17, there were more than 1,650, with nearly all of them accompanied by their very own proprietary blockchain technology.

Were this not competition enough, brand-name companies have been working on developing their own blockchain technologies, some of which work independently of a virtual currency. For example, IBM (NYSE:IBM) is developing blockchain solutions for the financial services industry, as well as non-currency applications. In October 2017, IBM partnered with Stellar to use its Lumens coin as a financial intermediary in cross-border transactions in the South Pacific region processed on IBM's blockchain platform. Also, IBM and shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk recently announced their intention to create a separate joint venture that'll focus on developing shipping-based blockchain solutions. Such solutions could allow for real-time tracking of shipped products, as well as expedite approvals by eliminating paper from the equation.

In other words, growing competition from other cryptocurrencies and brand-name companies as a result of the low barrier to entry in developing and deploying blockchain and virtual coins is making life difficult.

Image source: Getty Images.

The other issue appears to be the proof-of-concept Catch-22 that practically every cryptocurrency is currently stuck in.

On the surface, Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin have done a really good job of brandling their blockchain technology or tokens, and the result has been countless partnerships. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance had 200 member organizations as of October testing a version of Ethereum's blockchain across a variety of industries.Meanwhile, Ripple landed five brand-name financial partners in under two years' time, and Litecoin's average daily transactions have been steadily climbing since founder Charlie Lee announced he'd be working full-time to further Litecoin as a medium of exchange for goods and services.

But the underlying problem for most cryptocurrencies is that their platforms are being tested in small-scale projects and demos and not in large-scale, real-world scenarios. Enterprises simply don't feel comfortable yet with the idea of switching to blockchain platforms because they haven't been proven on a large scale. Yet, they'll never be proven on a large scale until a handful of enterprises gives blockchain a chance. This Catch-22 is precisely why cryptocurrency valuations have been deflating. If businesses don't move beyond this proof-of-concept conundrum, it's possible we could see Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin fall further, despite each offering unique advantages over bitcoin.

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What's Wrong With Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin? -- The ...

A recent surge in Litecoinprice shows that investors are beginning to catch on this digital currency as an alternative to Bitcoin. While ithas remained the dominant player and continues to belargest digital currency by share of market cap but Bitcoin is losing some ground to other digital currencies onquestionsof mining efficiencies as well as how expensive it is now to buy.

Here are some reasons why Litecoinmay prove to be a better investment than Bitcoin in the future.

Litecoin is often compared to Bitcoin, and for good reason: the two digital currencies are closely related, with Litecoin having been heavily influenced by its older peer when it was developed in 2011. Both share a deflationary nature, with the supply set to taper in the next few years.

However, there are important differences that separate the two. First, Litecoin has a lifetime cap of 84 million coins, which is four times higher than the total number of Bitcoinsthat can be mined. This means that as demand increases, there will be a larger supply of Litecoins to meet it, at least initially.

Another way that Litecoin may have improved upon Bitcoin is in regard to its block generation time. Litecoin has a time of 2.5 minutes, compared with 10 minutes for Bitcoin. In practical terms, this means that transactions involving Litecoin will be confirmed four times faster than those for Bitcoin, according to Seeking Alpha's Melwin Phillip.

Phillip believes that Litecoin could be a useful medium of exchange for small transactions in particular, as the fees will likely be substantially lower than those for Bitcoin. For investment purposes, this means that users will spend less money paying to buy or sell Litecoin than they would Bitcoin.

While Litecoin and Bitcoin share the proof of work concept when it comes to their mining operations, the algorithms that the two blockchain systems use are quite different.

Litecoin's mining algorithms are significantly simpler than those of Bitcoin, meaning it can be mined on computers which are less powerful and that it will take less energy. Considering that mining operations around the world take up massive amounts of electricity and there is already a shortage of powerful graphics cards needed for mining rigs, this could prove to be a major advantage for Litecoin miners going forward.

All of these key differences between Bitcoin and Litecoin point toward certain advantages that Litecoin might have over its bigger peer when it comes to investments.

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Could Litecoin Be a Better Investment Than Bitcoin ...

It may seem like everyone from Grandma to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has piled into Bitcoin in the past year, but theres at least one group thats looking for a way out: Criminals.

In the next six to 12 months, the most widely used digital coin is poised to lose its spot as a dominant payment method on the dark web, according to a study by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Its biggest competitors? Litecoin and Dash.

Transacting with Bitcoin has become more expensive and less efficientas an influx of users has put strain on the network, leading to higher fees. As a result, some cryptocurrency enthusiasts -- including criminals, who were among Bitcoins earliest adopters -- have resorted to other digital coins.

Bitcoin is still the gold standard for transactions in the illegal underworld, but its losing ground to some of its crypto cousins, the study found. Litecoin, the sixth-most valuable digital currency, is now accepted by nearly one third of all dark-web vendors who take alternative payment methods. Dash, the 12th-biggest cryptocurrency, is accepted by 20 percent of the market.

Source: Recorded Future

The Dash network is not aware of a single Darknet market that uses Dash on its platform, said Ryan Taylor, Dash Core Group Inc.s chief executive officer, in an email sent by an external spokesman. We believe it is an absurd assertion that the report concluded that 20 percent of vendors accept Dash for Darknet transactions. Numerous publicly available reports, even with Tor and VPN assisted searches, have indicated no adoption of Dash as an alternative payment method for these transactions.

Recorded Future scoured 150 prominent message boards, marketplaces and illegal services to find that Litecoin is the second-most popular cryptocurrency on the dark web. The Somerville, Massachusetts-based researchers also broke down their results by geography, noting that Russians preferred Litecoin because of its convenience, while English speakers favored Monero for its security features.

The same class of power users who helped to establish Bitcoin as a unified payment instrument across the dark web, spurring the underground economy and plaguing the world with never-ending ransomware attacks, illicit drugs, and weaponry, now see it as a roadblock to proliferating criminal business, wrote Andrei Barysevich and Alexandr Solad, the reports authors. Litecoin and Dash will take their place next to Bitcoin as the everyday payment currencies of the dark web.

Criminal Underworld Is Dropping Bitcoin for Another Currency

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Criminals May Ditch Bitcoin for Litecoin, Dash, Study Says ...

As much as bitcoin is the cryptocurrency that has the most mainstream attention, there are hundreds upon hundreds of alternative coins which have been created over the years since it was born. While some alternatives like Ethereum and ZCash have become vogue in only the past couple of years though, some cryptocurrencies have been around for much longer, like Litecoin.

But what is Litecoin? In a nutshell, its a cryptocurrency like many others, built on a similar framework and ideal as bitcoin itself. Created by an ex-Google employee a few years after the first cryptocurrency, its now one of the most commonly traded crypto-coins out there, with a market value in the billions.

If youve heard of Litecoin, youve heard of bitcoin and have a reasonable idea of what the whole cryptocurrency scene is all about, but it never hurts to have a quick refresher. Cryptocurrencies are entirely digital currencies. Think of them as the way you operate your online banking. Its not a real or physical currency, but it can have real value. That currency can be transferred between users all over the world with low fees and far faster than most traditional currencies.

One key difference between your online bank account and cryptocurrencies is that they are (for the most part) entirely decentralized. That is, they arent controlled by any one authority. The ledger, or blockchain, that records and confirms all transactions as valid is publicly viewable and editable by a large system of users all over the world.

In the case of Litecoin, those confirmations are created by a process known as mining. Thats a rather complicated topic in its own right, but suffice to say it involves performing complex mathematical calculations with powerful computing hardware. Miners who take part in it also create new Litecoins, which they are rewarded with for performing the service, along with a transaction fee.

Those calculations get more and more complicated as time goes on, limiting the influx of new Litecoin. There is also a hard limit of 84 billion Litecoin, which means there will come a day where no new tokens are created. Those factors create a scarcity which has helped drive up Litecoins value over the years, among other factors.

Launched in October 2011, just under three years after the debut of its inspiration, bitcoin, Litecoin was created by former Google employee, Charlie Lee. Described by its creator as the silver to bitcoins gold, Litecoin is based on the Bitcoin Core client. Litecoin was designed to emulate its predecessor, extolling the same virtues of decentralization but with a few key features that arguably make it a more nimble alternative.

While bitcoin blocks can only be processed every ten minutes part of the reason it has experienced longer confirmation times with the recent influx of users Litecoin reduced that to a targeted 2.5 minutes per block. While that hasnt always been possible throughout the cryptocurrencys history, it is the average that makes transactions faster and cheaper to confirm, or validate.

The other key difference Lee employed with Litecoins creation, was in his choice of hashing algorithm. All cryptocurrency mining employs complicated algorithms. Most are based on the same SHA-256 algorithm that bitcoin uses, but Litecoin leveraged the Scrypt algorithm instead. Easier to compute, lighter on the workload, its what enables the faster confirmation of Litecoin transactions. There is an argument to be made that its enabling of faster transactions is a security issue, since less thorough checks of the data are required, but it hasnt manifested in an obvious problem in the real world as of yet.

These two main differences from bitcoin make Litecoin very much its own cryptocurrency and more than just a pretender to the throne. Over the years it has garnered a base of thousands of owners all over the world, who between them trade millions of dollars worth of Litecoin every day.

Although cryptocurrencies (and the blockchain technology its built upon) could have serious potential for streamlining a variety of industries around the world especially when you factor in smart contracts they have two main functions as it stands. The first of those is in transactions.

Cryptocurrency, operating in the same manner as traditional, fiat, currencies can be used to pay for goods and services. Although cryptocurrencies have a reputation for being used on the darknet for drug transactions and facilitating ransomware attacks, a growing number of legitimate, legal outlets accept Litecoin as legal tender. Whether youre looking for jewelry, clothing, or even luxury cars, there are many places you can spend Litecoin.

Litecoin is also a great cryptocurrency for giving money to friends and family. Due to its shorter block time, fast confirmations and fees that rarely go north of a fraction of a dollar, Litecoin can be transferred to anyone quickly and cheaply if you have their wallet address.

Like some of the other alternative cryptocurrencies out there, interest in Litecoin as a transactional medium has increased in recent months thanks to bitcoins value spike and its escalating transaction fees. Although there is no guarantee that Litecoin wont bump up against such problems itself should it see a large influx of new owners, for now at least its a great medium for transferring wealth quickly online.

Although cryptocurrencies like Litecoin were originally intended to conduct transactions online, much like traditional currencies, their value does increase and decrease based on a number of market factors. Cryptocurrencies however, with their lack of governmental backing, tend to fluctuate far more thats why bitcoin and others have seen such an interest from mainstream investors in recent months.

Litecoin too has been on quite the tear and has made many people very wealthy in a relatively short period of time. Like many other cryptocurrencies in the past year, its value has increased exponentially. At the start of 2017 a single Litecoin was worth just $4. At its peak in December that same year it hit $371, correcting to $178 at the time of writing.

Thats an enormous increase that shows that just because bitcoins are worth thousands of dollars, that Litecoin cant also be a great store of value. Some, like its creator, would argue that Litecoin has a greater potential as a cryptocurrency because of its better transactional abilities. While that might not necessarily affect its value directly, it could make it more popular, which in turn creates its own potential for a value increase over time due to demand.

When Litecoin was first created, it was just one of a handful of cryptocurrencies. Today its one of many more than 1,300, with more being created every day. While it has greater name-recognition than most cryptocurrencies, its market cap of near $10 billion is far less than the biggest players and individual coins are worth much less too.

That shouldnt put people off it though. It truly shines as a regular transactional medium, with only bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple seeing a greater daily trade volume. There may be leaner coins and some with more advanced features than Litecoin today, but it has firmly cemented itself as one of the most important cryptocurrencies. It might not quite be the silver to bitcoins gold anymore, but it is one of the most precious digital metals we have, and it doesnt seem likely to fall from favor anytime soon.

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What Is Litecoin? Here's Everything You Need To Know ...

Litecoin is the worlds fourth most popular cryptocurrency by market cap, after bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple. Find out everything you need to know about the global decentralized currency today.

Litecoin is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency that works in a similar way to Ethereum and bitcoin. Its a peer-to-peer internet currency that allows for instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world. Its a decentralized payment network that isnt managed by any central authorities. The network, like other blockchains, is secured by mathematics. Individuals can control their own finances without relying on third parties like banks or traditional financial institutions.

The Litecoin.org website describes how the currency doesnt want to work as an alternative to bitcoin, but as a complementary force:

With substantial industry support, trade volume and liquidity, Litecoin is a proven medium of commerce complementary to bitcoin.

One of the first advantages that Litecoin has over bitcoin is its higher transaction volume: the blockchain generates blocks more frequently, which means transactions can be processed more quickly (2.5 minutes as opposed to 10 minutes).

Lets take a closer look at some of Litecoins most prominent features.

Litecoin offers all of the following features:

You can find general information as well as a list of services and exchanges that support Litecoin. General information can be found at the Litecoin Wiki, while up-to-the-minute network stats can be found at Litecoin Block Explorer Charts. Meanwhile, the source code for Litecoin Core is all open and available to anyone through GitHub.

Like most members of the cryptocurrency community, Litecoin is open source software. The software project was released under the MIT/X11 license, which means users have the power to run, modify, and copy the software and to distribute, at your option, modified versions of the software. Litecoin has a transparent release process that facilitates the independent verification of binaries and their corresponding source code.

The Litecoin blockchain can handle higher transaction volume than bitcoin. Thats because the Litecoin blockchain has more frequent block generation. The network supports more transactions without the need to modify the software in the future. As a result, merchants enjoy faster confirmation times while still having the ability to wait for more confirmations when selling bigger ticket items.

Like all good cryptocurrencies, your Litecoins can be encrypted. You can secure your wallet, view transactions, and check your account balance using the Litecoin projects own wallet. Before you spend Litecoins, however, youll need to enter your password.

Mining rewards are a crucial part of any blockchain. With the Litecoin blockchain, miners are currently awarded (as of June 2017) with 25 new Litecoins per block. That amount gets cut in half about once every 4 years (or every 840,000 blocks). The Litecoin network is scheduled to produce 84 million Litecoins, which is 4 times as many currency units as bitcoin.

Litecoin and bitcoin are two very similar cryptocurrencies. Litecoin was originally based on a bitcoin fork, so the two have a common foundation. However, there are some key differences between Litecoin and bitcoin, including:

Litecoin processes blocks every 2.5 minutes, instead of the 10 minutes taken by bitcoins blockchain. There are pros and cons to this processing time: theres a higher probability of orphaned blocks, for example. On the positive side of things, Litecoins faster processing time means a greater resistance to a double spending attack over the same period as bitcoin. However, total work done is also a consideration so if the network has 10 times less computing work done per block than bitcoin, then bitcoins confirmation is about 10 times harder to reverse even though the Litecoin network can add confirmation blocks at a rate four times faster.

Litecoin uses Scrypt in its proof of work algorithm, which is a sequential memory-hard function requiring asymptotically more memory than an algorithm that isnt memory-hard. That generally means you need more memory in your miners compared to blockchains that dont use Scrypt.

The Litecoin blockchain plans to release 84 million Litecoins in total, or four times as many currency as the total supply of bitcoin.

The use of Scrypt was an interesting choice. The purpose of using Scrypt was to allow miners to mine both bitcoin and Litecoin at the same time. It was also chosen as a way to avoid giving an advantage to GPU, FPGA, and ASIC miners over CPU miners. The other component of using the Scrypt algorithm is that FPGA and ASIC devices made for mining Litecoin tend to be more complicated to create and more expensive to produce than they are for bitcoin, which uses SHA-256. This is because the Scrypt hashing scheme is more memory intensive, and ASICs and FPGAs have higher memory requirements as a result.

Litecoin was introduced to the internet in October 2011. The first release occurred on October 7, 2011, via an open source client released on GitHub. Litecoins first release (0.8.5.1) was a fork of the Bitcoin Core client created by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee. The key improvement over Bitcoin was its decreased block generation time (2.5 minutes, instead of 10 minutes with bitcoin).

Other advantages included the increased maximum number of coins, different hashing algorithm (Scrypt-based, instead of SHA-256), and a slightly modified GUI.

Litecoin remained a lesser-known altcoin until around November 2013, when it exploded with growth. The aggregate value of Litecoin surged by 100% within a 24 hour period during that month. By the end of November 2013, Litecoin had a market cap of $1 billion. In early 2017, the currencys market cap stood at around $1.5 billion. As of June 2017, Litecion has a market cap over $2 billion, with a price of around $30 to $40 per token.

Litecoin has also distinguished itself from the cryptocurrency community for other reasons. In May 2017, Litecoin became the first of the top 5 cryptocurrencies (by market cap) to adopt Segregated Witness. Later that month, the company completed the first Lightning Network transaction through Litecoin, when it transferred 0.00000001 LTC from Zurich to San Francisco in under one second.

You can contact the Litecoin project development team at [emailprotected]

Litecoin has remained steady as the worlds fourth most popular cryptocurrency (by market cap). The only currencies ahead of Litecoin in market cap are bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple. With a market cap of over $2 billion, Litecoin has grown from a small bitcoin fork project into a giant of the digital economy. You can learn more about Litecoin by visiting Litecoin.org today.

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