Litecoin is another cryptocurrency that you should watch out for if you’re planning to invest in cryptocurrencies. It is often referred to Forex Market Reports as the more popular Bitcoin’s little brother.
Litecoin has already gained a fairly widespread attention since it launched in 2011. Just like Bitcoin, Litecoin is a form of digital currency that uses the blockchain to maintain a public digital ledger of all transactions.
Litecoin can be used to transfer funds directly between people and businesses without having to have an intermediary like a bank or payment processing service.
Let’s dig deeper into what Litecoin is. Let’s first see Trading Hours how it compares to other cryptocurrencies in terms of speed, number of coins, and market cap.
Speed
Litecoin lies on the same open source code behind Bitcoin. However, it also sports some remarkable differences.
Litecoin was invented by engineer Charlie Lee to serve as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. One of the greatest differences between these two cryptocurrencies is the speed at which transactions are done with them.
Litecoin generate blocks nearly four times faster than Bitcoin does. That means Litecoin can confirm the legitimacy of transactions a lot faster than Bitcoin. It can also process a much higher number of transactions over the same time frame.
Number of Coins
If you ever wonder why cryptocurrency coins have intrinsic value is because they are still governed by the law of supply and demand. In other words, they have a limited supply.
Once a specific amount of Bitcoins and Litecoins are created, no more will be created. There can be no more new coins starting that point.
As comparison, Litecoin can whip out more coins than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is limited at 21 million coins. Meanwhile, Litecoin will peak at the 84 million mark.
Market Cap
Admittedly, Litecoin’s market capitalization is much smaller than that of Bitcoin. However, Litecoin still places itself among the top 5 cryptocurrencies in the world. Such rankings move or fluctuate depending on the price and number of coins in circulation.
Proof of Work
If you’re going to compare Litecoin with Bitcoin in terms of their mining procedure, you’ll see huge disparities. But first, bear in mind that the two processes both use proof-of-work consensus mechanism.
Understanding proof-of-work is pretty much quick. The miners use their computational power to solve super difficult cryptographic puzzles, which are necessarily extremely difficult. If they’re easy to solve, miners would rush in and drain out the entire cryptocurrency supply.
Even if the puzzle solving itself is difficult, the process of checking whether the solution to the puzzle is correct or not is fairly easier.
That’s proof of work, simplified: you solve the puzzles and then checking whether the solution is correct or not.
Storing Litecoin
When it comes to storing cryptocurrencies, you have a variety of options for wallets. You can choose a hardware wallet, which are physical devices that are usually in the USB-stick style. Desktop wallets may also an option for you, and they are a form of hot wallets. You can download them and install on your PC. Among other options, you can pick paper wallet and mobile wallets.
