This Litecoin review aims to tell you everything you need to know before investing into this cryptocurrency. You can read more about the history of Litecoin, its differences compared to Bitcoin, as well as why people are investing into it.
If you’re not up-to-date with the system that Litecoin and all other cryptocurrencies are built on, you might want to learn more about blockchain technology. Understanding how these cryptos work is of crucial importance, so if you are not familiar with the concept, click here to read more about blockchain technology.
Now that you know how cryptocurrencies works, it’s time to delve deeper into Litecoin. Let’s look at what you can learn from this Litecoin review:
- What is Litecoin
- The history of Litecoin
- Differences between Litecoin and Bitcoin
- Should I invest into Litecoin?
Cryptocurrencies, such as Litecoin and Bitcoin have become very popular over the last few years. More and more people are starting to realize that crypto-coins are a real investment opportunity. Mining cryptocurrencies has been around for many years now, but it’s not the only way to capitalize on this phenomenon. There are a couple of investment opportunities that you can take. For example, if you want to invest money into Bitcoins, Optioment is a great Bitcoin investment fund. Basically, you can deposit Bitcoins and gain weekly interest on them. If you’re interested, be sure to check out the Optioment official website.
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What is Litecoin
Litecoin (LTC) is a virtual currency that is decentralized; meaning that there is no one central entity behind it. It is an open-source ledger (list) of transactions that are kept on many different nodes (computers) around the world. In order to make changes to the ledger or add a block to the blockchain, the majority of the nodes need to agree on the change. Maintaining the ledger and updating it requires GPU and RAM. The reward for the computing power that is consumed is distributed in Litecoin (LTC), which is a cryptocurrency, just like Bitcoin. Litecoin was created as a sub-currency to Bitcoin and many people refer to Litecoin as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. This is mostly because Litecoin is technically very similar to Bitcoin.
The history of Litecoin
Similarly to Ethereum (read our Ethereum review by clicking here), Litecoin was also created because someone wanted to innovate the Bitcoin protocol, but wasn’t allowed to. In 2011 October, Charles Lee (a former Google engineer) created the Litecoin network. His goal was to improve on the Bitcoin blockchain, so he created a fork of the core Bitcoin client and made a few upgrades.
Since the network was started, Litecoin experienced multiple exponential spikes in its value. The most drastic growth happened since the start of 2017. In 2017, the price of Litecoin has risen by 1.500%. In August 2017, Litecoin has reached the market capitalization total of $2 billion. It also reached $3 billion in October, only 2 months later.
In May, 2017 the Litecoin network adopted the SegWit protocol. This soft fork change basically speeds up small transactions that are happening on the blockchain network. SegWit was also implemented on other cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Vertcoin and Digibyte.
If you want to learn more about what the Segregated Witness, or SegWit protocol is, be sure to read the Wikipedia entry on it!
The first Lightning Network transaction was completed through the Litecoin network in the same month SegWit was implemented. The network was able to transfer 0.00000001 LTC from Zurich to San Francisco in under one second.
Differences between Litecoin and Bitcoin
While Litecoin is a fork of the core Bitcoin client, the two still have some major dissimilarities. Minor changes consist of a new graphical user interface and bug fixes. The three huge differences between the two protocols are:
- Litecoin has faster transaction confirmation: While the Bitcoin network needs 10 minutes to process a block and add it to the blockchain, Litecoin does this in 2.5 minutes. This allows users to verify and complete transactions much faster on the Litecoin network. Theoretically, this also makes Litecoin more secure against hacker attacks.
- Litecoin uses “scrypt” to certify transactions: As Litecoin uses scrypt as proof of work, adding a block to the blockchain not only requires raw processing power, but RAM also. Scrypt also makes running multiple instances at once more difficult. This was implemented to counter the effect that ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) technology had on Bitcoin. The special mining hardware that is used for Bitcoin is not that efficient for Litecoin.
- Litecoin has a higher coin limit: The maximum number of Bitcoins that can be created is 21 million, while the maximum number of Litecoins is 84 million.
Should I invest into Litecoin?
Everybody who is following the crypto world has seen the huge spike in Bitcoin’s price over the last year. The same has already happened once to Litecoin and it is bound to happen again. We are currently in the middle of the crypto revolution and this is the best time to act. Millions of people are investing into cryptocurrencies around the globe. Litecoin is in the top 10 cryptocurrencies of 2017, so it is one of the best investment options that you have. If you want to see which some of the other most relevant cryptocurrencies in 2017 are, check out our toplist.
The good thing about Litecoin is that it isn’t as expensive as Bitcoin. As of the end of October, the price of one Bitcoin is around $5.800 (or €5.000). Many people can’t afford such a huge investment, so they cannot benefit from Bitcoin’s rise in value. Litecoin on the other hand has a much lower cost. Right now, the price of Litecoin is $56 (€48). This makes Litecoin more accessible and affordable to regular people who want to invest into the crypto world. Many small companies, family businesses and individuals choose to purchase Litecoins. This is a smart move because of the next inevitable spike in Litecoin’s price.
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To answer the question; yes, you should invest into Litecoin. And right now is the best time, as nobody knows when the value of this crypto coin is going to skyrocket again. So, to start off on your crypto-trading journey, you will need a virtual wallet first where you can hold your Litecoins and other crypto coins. Bitpanda offers wallets for Litecoin, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dash and they also do crypto-trading. If you want to start purchasing Litecoins, check out the Bitpanda website.
Conclusion
Litecoin is a very promising cryptocurrency, mostly because it was built on the same principal as Bitcoin. Whenever we see a spike in Bitcoin’s price, Litecoin gains value shortly after. This is why many people consider investing into Litecoin. Its low price is also a huge selling point. Additionally, the fact that transactions are completed almost 4 times faster on the Litecoin network when compared to Bitcoin is also impressive.
These are some of the reasons why so many people are choosing to invest into cryptocurrencies and especially Litecoin. There are many ways you can purchase these crypto coins. For example, eToro is another great crypto trader, with a social aspect. You can purchase and sell Litecoin through eToro, so be sure to check out what they are offering.
Hopefully, you have understood what Litecoin is and how it compares to Bitcoin through this Litecoin review. If you found this article interesting and helpful, be sure to read some of our other articles about the crypto world: