Litecoin is an open-source peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that uses blockchain technology to keep records of the transactions conducted and has managed to catch the eyes of developers and investors since it was founded in 2011 by Charlie Lee.
It is money in digital form which is used to execute a transaction between two ends without any interference from third parties, such as banking system, payment processing services, etc.
Transaction Speed
Despite being called the silver of bitcoin gold, Litecoin offers faster transactions than bitcoin, though they both are based on the same source code. It can generate blocks about four times swifter than bitcoin and therefore can conduct more transactions than bitcoin within the same interval of time.
Number of Coins
Though bitcoin and Litecoin follow the same strategy of limiting coin generation to maintain the intrinsic value of coins, they differ in the aspect of the number of coins.
Total 21 million bitcoin will be generated in the market, whereas Litecoin has set the boundary to 84 million coins.
Market Cap
It is known to be the younger brother of bitcoin, is stated earlier. Therefore, it is pretty much normal for Litecoin to follow bitcoin in ranking. It has ensured its place within top 5 cryptocurrencies prevailing, and the position is mobile based on the number of circulated coins and their market price.
Litecoin Mining
Mining is the process of block formation as well as the process of generating fresh coins. People or the computers performing the act of mining are called miners. Miners are to use different hash algorithms to mine Bitcoin and Litecoin, and the number of newly generated coins is also not the same. Bitcoin uses Secure Hash Algorithm 2, shortly SHA-256, which is more complex than the memory-intensive algorithm, commonly known as script, used by Litecoin.
Miners use the processing power of GPU and/or CPU to input data through the algorithms mentioned above to solve complex mathematical problems. Each time a problem is solved, new coins are created, of which, miners get their due portions. At the same time, the transaction is considered valid and allowed to be added to the blockchain. Miners with more powerful mining rig get the larger portion of the pie. That’s why the miners with limited efficiency collectively do mining, which is known as pool mining.
Buying Bitcoin
Mining is the common most process of gathering any cryptocurrency. But there are other ways too. Some websites called exchanges allow exchanging cryptocurrencies where Litecoin can be purchased with Bitcoin, Ethereum etc. some exchanges like Coinbase allows purchasing Litecoin with fiat money too.
Litecoin Wallets
Like other cryptocurrencies, Litecoin has both software-based wallet and physical hard wallets.
Software-based wallet installed on computer or mobile device. Another complex and outdated yet secured way is to create a Paper Wallet. A paper wallet contains a public key and private key, which is generated offline and printed out. These keys are required to conduct a transaction to or from the wallet. This process is much secure as the keys are not connected to the internet.
Search Engine for Litecoin
As the records of transactions are added to the public ledger, it is possible to find an individual block, the record of a single transaction, the balance of an individual balance and so on. This service is served by a sort of search engine called Litecoin block explorer. A user can find the suitable one simply by searching on Google.