About Litecoin

Litecoin (LTC)

Litecoin (LTC)

Price:

Currency Overview: What Is LTC?

Litecoin, created in 2011, is meant to be the lighter variant of Bitcoin to allow quick and affordable payments. It's almost four times as fast as Bitcoin in terms of payment processing. Litecoin is built to ensure enhanced scalability for quicker growth. In many ways, Litecoin is also identical to bitcoin, and that's precisely why a silver coin often denotes it as opposed to Bitcoin's gold. The primary objective of Litecoin is to establish a global payment system so that people can receive and send funds anywhere they want without any involvement of intermediaries. Litecoin has a native token which is denoted by the abbreviation LTC, and at the time of writing, LTC is priced at $47.87 with a market ca of just over $3.1 billion.

Mining Information

Coin difficulty:

Coin algorithm:

Coin network hashrate(H/s):

Max Supply Network H/s Algorithm BlockNo. Proof Type Start Date
84,000,000 PoW 2007-10-11
Twitter Website DifficultyAdj. Mkt. Cap. Penalty Current Supply Block Reward
@Litecoin https://litecoin.org/ 70,289,381.28

Litecoin Founder

As we previously touched on, Litecoin was founded by Charlie Lee, an early cryptocurrency adopter and a name held in high regard in the cryptocurrency industry.
Charlie Lee, also known as “Chocobo,” is an early Bitcoin miner and computer scientist, who was a former software engineer for Google. In addition, Charlie Lee held the role of director of engineering at Coinbase between 2015 and 2017 before moving on to other ventures.
Today, Charlie Lee is an outspoken advocate of cryptocurrencies and is the managing director of the Litecoin Foundation—a non-profit organization that works alongside the Litecoin Core Development team to help advance Litecoin.
Besides Lee, the Litecoin Foundation also includes three other individuals on the board of directors: Xinxi Wang, Alan Austin and Zing Yang — all of which are accomplished in their own right.

Litecoin Blockchain vs. Bitcoin Blockchain

As LTC is essentially a fork of bitcoin core (BTC), they are in most regards technically nearly identical. With substantial industry support, trade volume and liquidity, litecoin is commonly referred to as a proven medium of commerce complementary to bitcoin. However, litecoin does have some technical differences compared to bitcoin:
● the litecoin blockchain aims to process a block every 2.5 minutes, rather than Bitcoin's 10 minutes, which allows for faster transaction confirmation of almost four times.
● the litecoin network has a target of 84 million Litecoins, whereas bitcoin’s target is 21 million BTC.
● litecoin miners use a different proof of work hashing algorithm –scrypt- whereas bitcoin uses the SHA-256 hashing algorithm. Scrypt requires more resources and it’s therefore generally accepted to be the best deterrent for malicious, brute force attacks on a network; but, mining hardware for scrypt is also more expensive. For those interested Litecoins 'Top Hashers', see how many Litecoins they can earn per day.
● the litecoin blockchain also uses a slightly modified graphical user interface (GUI) compared to bitcoin.
Because the LTC blockchain is capable of handling higher transaction volume than its counterpart bitcoin, merchants get faster confirmation times.

And, due to more frequent block generation, the network supports more transactions without a need to modify the software in the future. Litecoin’s wallet encryption allows you to secure your wallet, so that you can view transactions and your account balance, but are required to enter your password before spending litecoins; this provides protection from wallet-stealing viruses and trojans. In May 2017, Litecoin became the first of the top cryptocurrencies to adopt Segregated Witness (SegWit). Also during May 2017, history was made when the first Lightning Network transaction –which uses off-blockchain SegWit protocols- was completed through the litecoin network; transferring 0.00000001 LTC from Zurich to San Francisco in under one second.

Introduction to Coin Mining

● A block is mined within 2.5 minutes and the current reward per block is 12.5 LTC. This will half in four years.
● Can be mined with Easy Miner, MultiMiner, GUIMiner Scrypt, CPUminer, CGminer Litecoin, and Awesome Miner. These allow you to switch to GPU mining from CPU mining.
● For ASIC miners, the software will most likely be pre-installed in the hardware. Otherwise, you can use the free ASIC/FPGA miner or other software.
● Litecoin mining pools include Litecoinpool, MinerGate, LTC.top, Antpool, F2pool, and ViaBTC.

FAQ and Forum

  • How was Litecoin created?
  • On 9th October, 2011, Charlie Lee (@coblee) announced the launch of Litecoin - a new decentralized cryptocurrency - on bitcointalk.org. The genesis block was mined three days later and Litecoin (LTC) entered the world!

  • What is Blockchain Technology?
  • A blockchain is a digital ledger (read: list of records). The ledger is made up of a string of 'blocks' that are linked together - in a chain - using cryptography. Hence, 'blockchain' - a chain made up of blocks.

  • Who controls Litecoin?
  • The short answer is: no one and everyone! Litecoin is decentralized - meaning there’s no CEO, no board. The beauty of Litecoin is that anyone can contribute to its adoption, development, growth and success. The Litecoin Foundation was created with this in-mind - to be a community run organization whose volunteers can contribute to the digital currency, Litecoin ($LTC).

  • What makes Litecoin different?
  • ● LTC is digital cash. Able to be sent in almost real-time, with near-zero fees, to anyone in the world.
    ● A store of value. Many consider Litecoin to be a better version Bitcoin and thus gold given that it's portable, easily storable, and impossible to counterfeit.
    ● A way to "bank the unbanked." Litecoin lets anyone with access to the internet create a wallet and use the network, including the estimated 1.4 billion globally who lack access to the traditional financial system.

  • What are some use cases for Litecoin?
  • Unlike many modern cryptocurrencies, Litecoin was designed (like its big brother, Bitcoin) to be fair, decentralized and to provide ultimate utility to users. To this day, and ever since its creation in 2011, Litecoin was designed to only ever have:
    ● A maximum supply of 84 million; protecting against inflation
    ● As part of Litecoin's coin issuance, miners are rewarded a certain amount of litecoins whenever a block is produced (approximately every 2.5 minutes). When Litecoin first started, 50 litecoins per block were given as a reward to miners. After every 840,000 blocks are mined (approximately every 4 years), the block reward halves and will keep on halving until the block reward per block becomes 0 (approximately by year 2142). As of now, the block reward is 12.5 coins per block and will decrease to 6.25 coins per block post halving.
    ● Any change to these ‘rules’ requires all Litecoin participants (read: miners who support the Litecoin network) to agree by consensus to approve the change.

  • How does Litecoin mining work?
  • The Litecoin network - and the miners that support it - bring Litecoin(s) into the world every 2.5 minutes. And will do so until the final Litecoin is mined in ~2142.

  • What are transaction fees?
  • In order to be considered a successful and valid transfer, every Litecoin transaction must be added to the Litecoin blockchain - the official public ledger of all completed transactions. Miners get financially rewarded for processing these transactions, and thus supporting the Litecoin network. With every block (a collection of transactions) added to the blockchain comes a bounty called a 'block reward,' as well as all fees sent with the transactions that were confirmed and included in the block.
    The average Litecoin transaction fee is less than a penny!

  • Can I earn interest and/or borrow against my Litecoin?
  • Yes. There are a variety of third-party service providers that offer interest on Litecoin and allow you to take loans out against your Litecoin.
    Please note that this typically requires using centralized-third party services, bringing additional risk.