Litecoin (LTC): Price, Charts and Market Cap

Cryptocurrency, created by former employee of Google Charles Li, is already accepted by companies in the field of electronics, clothing, games and advertising. The main characteristic of the Litecoin network is its ability to process a higher transaction volume compared to its counterpart, bitcoin. Another advantage is a large pool of coins: it is planned that in the course of history about 84 million litecoins will be created, which is four times the number of coins in bitcoin blockchain. Theoretically, this should allow Litecoin not to turn into an overly accessible currency, which could lead to its devaluation, but also protect it from becoming too complex to generate, and therefore potentially too expensive. How this strategy will work in the long term, we still have to see, but the current price of around $ 50 per coin indicates good prospects for the crypto currency.

Litecoin is often referred to as “Bitcoin-Lite”, or “silver” to Bitcoin’s gold. It’s indeed a Bitcoin fork, but though they share the same blockchain, the differences between the two cryptocurrencies are many. Firstly, they rely on different algorithms, and because of a less complex one Litecoin mining is perceived as more accessible for everyday user. Secondly, though the transactions in both chains occur simultaneously, their confirmation time is different: it takes around 9 minutes for Bitcoin’s long-term average transaction to be confirmed vs. 2,5 minutes for a Litecoin one, and such speed gives Litecoin a competitive advantage.

After the SegWit protocol implementation in April 2017, the price of Litecoin has grown steadily from $10 to more than $300 in December, making it one the fastest growing cryptocurrencies this year. Litecoin was also a beneficiary of the bitcoin rally – on certain days it enjoyed 20% or event 30% price increases. Thanks to its transaction speed Litecoin is positioned by its founder, Charlee Lee, as a cryptocurrency for everyday payments vs. bitcoin which is better as a long-term store of value. 

Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world. Litecoin is an open source, global payment network that is fully decentralized without any central authorities. Mathematics secures the network and empowers individuals to control their own finances. Litecoin features faster transaction confirmation times and improved storage efficiency than the leading math-based currency. With substantial industry support, trade volume and liquidity, Litecoin is a proven medium of commerce complementary to Bitcoin.

Find support across a growing number of Litecoin communities:

• Litecoin Forums
• Litecoin Telegram
• Reddit Litecoin
• Search for Users on Twitter
• IRC FreeNode network channels #litecoin (for general users) and #litecoin-dev (for developers).
• Find general information as well as a list of services and exchanges that support Litecoin at the Litecoin Wiki.
• Up-to-date network statistics can be found at Litecoin Block Explorer Charts.
• Source code for Litecoin Core and related projects are available on GitHub.

Litecoin is an open source software project released under the MIT/X11 license which gives you the power to run, modify, and copy the software and to distribute, at your option, modified copies of the software. The software is released in a transparent process that allows for independent verification of binaries and their corresponding source code.

Blockchain

• The Litecoin blockchain is capable of handling higher transaction volume than its counterpart - Bitcoin. Due to more frequent block generation, the network supports more transactions without a need to modify the software in the future.
• As a result, merchants get faster confirmation times, while still having ability to wait for more confirmations when selling bigger ticket items.
• 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 as well as a sanity check before sending payments.
• Miners are currently awarded with 25 new litecoins per block, an amount which gets halved roughly every 4 years (every 840,000 blocks).
• The Litecoin network is therefore scheduled to produce 84 million litecoins, which is 4 times as many currency units as Bitcoin.