What is Litecoin and how much is it worth?

Launched in October 2011 by its creator Charles "Charlie" Lee, Litecoin is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies in the world. This digital currency is also born from a Bitcoin rib, and precisely from the comparison with its predecessor, it is possible to identify both the common features and the peculiarities of Litecoin, which are then those in which we are interested in dwelling in detail.

 

The father of Litecoin (LTC), Charlie Lee, an MIT Boston graduate and former Google Inc. engineer, said in October 2011 that he was 'playing around' with the Bitcoin (BTC) matrix code with the intention of having fun creating a fork (fork in code).

The end result was the birth of Litecoin, an open source blockchain-based cryptocurrency freed from the control of any central authority , meaning that the participants in the network operate without the intermediation of banks, or credit companies and without ' duties' of governments or institutions.

Like all other cryptocurrencies, the basic concept is to be an antagonist and an alternative to Fiat currencies , it can be used by people and/or companies to purchase objects and transfer funds.

Specifically, Litecoin, thanks to the speed of transactions and their profitability, can be used in the cryptographic circuit even for small value transactions. Given the initial hype, which prophesied that Litecoin would be the new silver, compared to the new digital gold of Bitcoin, LTC has become mostly an object of trade, or speculative buying and selling on market value , rather than a real circulating coin.

How does Litecoin work and why is it different from Bitcoin?

When we talk about a cryptocurrency born as a fork of Bitcoin . Both LTC and BTC are peer-to-peer internet currencies that operate on a fully decentralized, open source, global payment network. But what are the main differences? Here they are listed schematically:

Price:

The first difference is the market price, also derived from the respective market capitalization. In March 2021, Bitcoin capitalized USD 1 trillion while Litecoin in the same month, with more than 66 million coins in circulation, reached just over USD 13 billion.

The value of Litecoin, at the moment (2022), is around 112 USD for 1 LTC, while for 1 BTC it takes more than 38,000 US dollars. The limit of 'mint' coins is also significantly different, for BTC it is set at 21 million units, for LTC at 84 million.

Algorithm:

The cryptographic algorithms used to make the blockchain work are different, with Bitcoin using the older generation SHA-256 algorithm and Litecoin using a newer algorithm called Scrypt. This also leads to a gap in block generation speed, as explained in the next point.

block speed:

Litecoin produces four times the number of blocks of Bitcoin, generating a new block every 2.5 minutes, while Bitcoin takes up to 10 minutes. The increased speed allows not only to quadruple the coin limit, but also to improve the ease of acquisition. The other side of the coin ? Using mining hardware, for LTC miners, requires significantly more processing power.

Is it beneficial to invest in Litecoin?

Actually a ' trick ' question, because the cryptocurrency sector cannot be approached in a simplistic way, with an absolute “ yes ” or “ no ” as answers. Buying Litecoin, as well as investing in other digital currencies, requires in-depth general analysis and constant updating of market trends.

It is true that certain fundamentals of Litecoin are highly appreciated by the crypto community and by financial analysts: in particular, the speed of digital transaction processing may give LTC greater possibilities of 'real' application as a currency of exchange between users.

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