Terry Litecoin is an early Bitcoin derivative or altcoin that uses blockchain technology. It is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency, the open source software project released under the MIT/X11 license, and it can be used to transfer funds directly between individuals or businesses.
Litecoin started in October 2011. Litecoin (LTC) is an improved version of the digital currency inspired by BitCoin (BTC), designed and programmed by a former Google programmer and released into operation on November 9, 2011.
LiteCoin has the same technical implementation as Bitcoin, but LiteCoin is created and transferred based on an open source cryptographic protocol that is not governed by any central authority.
Litecoin is designed to improve upon Bitcoin, and it has three significant differences compared to it. First, the Litecoin network can process a block every 2.5 minutes (instead of 10 minutes), thus providing faster transaction confirmations. Second, the Litecoin network is expected to produce 84 million Litecoin, which is as much as four times the amount of currency issued by the Bitcoin network. Third, Litecoin uses the scrypt cryptographic algorithm, first proposed by Colin Percival, in its proof-of-work algorithm, which makes it easier to mine Litecoin on a regular computer compared to Bitcoin. Each Litecoin is divided into 100,000,000 smaller units, defined by eight decimal places.
Transactions are processed through the Scrypt proof-of-work scheme, and the development of FPGAs (programmable logic gate arrays) and ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) for the Scrypt algorithm is more expensive compared to the sha256 used by Bitcoin.
LTC stands for Lightweight, and the meaning behind Litecoin is a lighter digital currency than Bitcoin. So, the official website of Litecoin also has this phrase: Bitcoin is gold, Litecoin is silver.
Compare the difference between Bitcoin and Litecoin: The Bitcoin network packs a block every 10 minutes, while the Litecoin network packs a block every 2.5 minutes, so it can provide faster transaction confirmations and can handle higher frequency transactions, and Litecoin transfers can generally be confirmed within 20 minutes.
Litecoin involves the process of creating and transferring digital currency through an open-source cryptographic protocol. It uses blockchain technology, a distributed public ledger that records all transactions. Litecoin is mainly for small transactions and is more efficient to use in daily life. Compared to Bitcoin, Litecoin has a higher market cap limit and a faster mining process. This means that although Litecoin transactions are usually smaller in size, they are faster and cheaper.
Both Bitcoin and Litecoin have a limited number of currencies in circulation. Litecoin has 84 million available currencies, more than four times as many as Bitcoin.
Although the market value of Litecoin is much lower than that of Bitcoin, it is still one of the most traded cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin would be a better savings currency, like gold, where it would not depreciate in value and would better protect the rights of property owners. Litecoin is more of a transaction currency, which simply means that people use Litecoin to buy things, just like silver. Bitcoin transaction fees are very expensive, you wouldn’t want to pay the same cost to buy a cup of coffee as you would to transfer $1 million, and for small transactions, Litecoin can come into its own.
Cryptocurrency must be easily available to everyone, and it is not possible for everyone to get cryptocurrency by mining. The development of Bitcoin cleared the way for other digital currencies, including Litecoin, and made everyone realize that Litecoin should make a difference. After many efforts to achieve the SW soft fork upgrade, a breakthrough was achieved for Litecoin itself.
The future technical development direction of Litecoin is: lightning network, smart contracts and anonymity, these measures will lay a solid foundation for the future development of Litecoin’s applications. The lightning network can reduce transaction costs and shorten transaction times, smart contracts can advance more grassroots applications based on Litecoin, and anonymity can prevent the cryptocurrency from affecting its use value due to historical transaction records.
There is not necessarily a competitive relationship between different coins. More people will use Litecoin for transactions in the future. It’s not a zero-sum game, and there should be multiple currencies in the market.
The biggest difference between Litecoin and other purely copycat cryptocurrencies is the use of the Scrypt algorithm, which is characterized by the fact that it cannot rely on CPU arithmetic alone in its operation, but requires a lot of memory support.
Currently, none of the professional bitcoin miners on the market have an advantage over graphics card mining in terms of Litecoin mining, so most of Litecoin’s current miners rely on graphics cards for mining.
The inventors of Litecoin believe that this setup allows the mining rights of Litecoin to be dispersed among a large number of retail investors, rather than gradually concentrated and monopolized in the hands of owners of large mining machines, as is the case with Bitcoin. It should be noted.
However, that there are good and bad aspects to this setup. While avoiding mining from becoming a capital-intensive industry involving a few people, the low total computing power caused by graphics card mining also makes Litecoin vulnerable to 51% attacks compared to Bitcoin.
Will LiteCoin Replace Bitcoin? The existence of Bitcoin has been doubted since shortly after its invention. One of the reasons for this is that there is no threshold for issuing a cryptographic currency, and anyone can issue a cryptocurrency.
We believe that cryptocurrencies will eventually become a significant member of the world’s mainstream currencies, and that Bitcoin is not necessarily the only one among them, just as the US dollar, euro, yen, and yuan coexist in real life. There won’t be just one cryptocurrency either, but there won’t be an infinite number of them co-existing in the world either, and eventually only Bitcoin and 2-3 other cryptocurrencies will survive.
In fact, the key to the survival of an open source currency is the public’s confidence in it, and confidence comes from long-term stable use.
For Litecoin, the question of whether it can withstand and survive a 51% attack is one that Litecoin must address. FTC, which uses the same algorithm as Litecoin, has already suffered a 51% attack and caused a run on public confidence, and the FTC is effectively being eliminated from history.
