Litecoin: A Robust Contender to Bitcoin(BTC)?

What is Litecoin?

Forked from Bitcoin by a former Google engineer, Litecoin, is a virtual currency that is said to be the first successful alternative cryptocurrency. Similar to Bitcoin, LTC is based on an open-source global payment network that is not regulated or controlled by any central authority. Its coin is often referred to as LTC. It has significant industry support, trading volume, and liquidity. It has the ability to complement Bitcoin. 

LTC has a limited supply of 84 million coins, and due to this finite supply, some investors find the coin reliable, for they expect the price to rise when supply reductions take place. LTC is accepted for goods and services and is traded on the most significant cryptocurrency exchanges. It also has Litecoin ATMs installed majorly in the US and other countries like Canada, Toronto etc. 

History of Litecoin:

Litecoin was founded in 2011, after the launch of the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. A former Google engineer Charlie Lee was the founder. Lee highlighted to be the lite version of Bitcoin during its initial announcement. Maybe this is why it has similar features to that of Bitcoin, with a few improvements that the team believed were important. For instance, it had a priority of improving the transaction speed. 

How does Litecoin work?

Litecoin has features similar to Bitcoin. And hence, it is brought into circulation via mining, which facilitates the introduction of new cryptocurrency units. The process of altering the shared ledger with a newly added transaction in which all the core supporters synchronize the copies is what we call cryptocurrency mining. These core supporters are known as miners. A miner earns around 12.5 LTC for verifying and adding every new block.

It uses the Proof-of-Work algorithm, enabling the miners to add new blocks to the blockchain network using a dedicated computing hardware. The cryptocurrency uses cryptography to allow the ownership and transactions of its cryptocurrency LTC. 

What makes Litecoin unique?

The factors that make Litecoin unique from its hard forks are the notably higher speed of transactions. The block time is comparatively low, making it a reliable coin if faster transactions are needed. There exists an ample supply of coins. Reliability on LTC also increases due to its experience of over a decade now. It has survived the market and fluctuations just like Bitcoin. It was built on the Scrypt algorithm Proof-of-Work(PoW), which makes it ASIC-resistant and makes it more accessible to the users and more centralized. 

Litecoin Vs Bitcoin:

It is among the first alternative coins(altcoins), which was derived from the original open-source code of Bitcoin. Emerged as a complement to Bitcoin, it proved to be a competitor gaining popularity. Similarities between the two are that both use the Proof-of-Work mechanism, and both have a limited supply.

And since Litecoin forks from Bitcoin, the price fluctuations of Litecoin have witnessed similarities to the price fluctuations of Bitcoin.

Supply: Bitcoin has a finite supply of 84 million LTCs, whereas Bitcoin has a finite supply of 21 million Bitcoins.

Block time: In comparison to Bitcoin, it has a faster block generation and finalizes the transactions faster with a block time of around 2.5 minutes, and that of Bitcoin is 10 minutes.

The algorithm used: It uses a different cryptographic algorithm from Bitcoin. It is developed on an algorithm called Scrypt, while Bitcoin uses SHA-256. Scrypt is an algorithm that uses SHA-256 but also includes higher memory requirements for PoW. Scrypt was explicitly designed by Lee to make custom-built hardware attacks on the currency more difficult.

Transaction cost and Price: LTC has cheaper transaction costs in comparison to Bitcoin. And BTC’s price is also way larger than that of LTC’s.

Market Capitalization: Bitcoin has higher popularity due to its ability to be mined by large farms and mining pools. Bitcoin has lesser supply and more demand, and hence, compared to LTC, Bitcoin has a massive market capitalization.

One of the competitive hard forks of LTC is (LCC). Users can generate LCC via mining. But it uses SHA-256 along with Hive mining, which is an agent-based mining system. It requires no specialized mining hardware setup. Other hard forks of Litecoin are Monacoin, Luckycoin, Junkcoin, Dogecoin etc. 

How to Buy Litecoin?

• The first step to buy Litecoin is to get a Litecoin wallet, which is offered by most crypto exchanges.
• You need to choose a Cryptocurrency exchange that supports the exchange of Litecoin.
• After opening up a wallet and setting up an account, clear the verification process, which might take time depending upon the exchanges.
• Decide the amount of Litecoin you want to buy, and a user can start with the selling and buying of Litecoin. 

The factors to consider before starting to buy Litecoin are that security should be reviewed whether the platform will ensure the safety of your assets, personal data and information. There exist fees for transacting any cryptocurrency; hence the transaction fees of every exchange should be analyzed. Another factor is the ease of use. Complex procedures often are annoying. 

Litecoin Price Predictions for the future:

At the time of writing, Litecoin(LTC) is trading at $129.93. The coin stands at the twentieth position by market capitalization, which is $9,049,979,083. Litecoin witnessed its All-time high in May 2021, when it reached $412.96. 

Wallet investor make a Litecoin Price prediction that the coin might hit around $600 by 2026. Whereas Coin Price Forecast predicts the price of Litecoin to hit around $379 by the end of next year.

Although these Price Predictions would prove accurate or not will be something to look forward to. And though many other cryptocurrencies and hard forks of Litecoin have emerged in recent times, increasing the competition in the market. But Litecoin has survived the market for a decade now and is still thriving. It will be interesting to see if these factors will help the coin evolve more in the coming years.