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How To Buy Litecoin | A Step By Step Guide – Cryptocurrency

Litecoin or LTC is considered to be one of the oldest cryptocurrencies in existence and is slowly making their mark in the world of cryptocurrencies. This particular cryptocurrency was first launched on October 7, 2011and was released by an open source client on GitHub by Charlie Lee, who was also a former Google Software engineer.

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What is Litecoin

A ‘Litecoin’ is a peer – to – peer or P2P (Peer – to – peer system means the exchange or share of data, information or assets between parties without the involvement of a central authority) cryptocurrency that enables instant, near zero cost payments to anyone in the world.

It is believed that Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin as it shares most of its characteristics with Bitcoin. However, as the name suggest, Litecoin is lighter, hence works faster and manifest in shorter block generation times of approximately 2.5 minutes. And as a result it cost lower transaction fees than Bitcoin. It is also a decentralized digital currency and uses the same encryption techniques to transfer and create a fund which means the funds can be transfer directly between individuals or businesses without the need for an intermediary such as a bank or payment processing service.

What Makes Litecoin Different

There are three things by which Litecoin can stand out which are:

  • Speed
  • Number of Coins
  • Market Cap

Speed

Often Litecoin is referred as the brother of Bitcoin. However, there is little difference between the two. One of which is transaction speed. Litecoin give rise to blocks about four times faster than Bitcoin. It confirms the legitimacy of transactions a lot quicker as well as process a much higher number of them over the same time frame.

Number of Coins

If cryptocurrencies has value it is because of their limited supply. After mining a certain number of coins, there can be no more new coins after that. Bitcoin has a limit of 21 million coins and Litecoin has a limit of 84 million coins.

Market Cap

Litcoin’s market cap is less than that of Bitcoin. However, Litecoin still ranks amongst the top 5 cryptocurrencies at the time of publication.

How To Mine Litecoins

Just like the Bitcoins, Litecoins are also a decentralized system which is unlike centralized systems where the government decides where to print the paper money and how to distribute it.

To understand how Litcoin mining is different from Bitcoin mining, it is important to understand how cryptocurrency mining works.

Cryptocurrency mining includes two functions which are adding transactions to the blockchain (securing and verifying) and also releasing new currency. Also, individual blocks added by miners should contain proof – of work or POW. In short, the miners relaying transactions, validating signatures, putting them into a block, adding them into the blockchain and distributing them to all the people into the network, In exchange to this service they are rewarded by getting the authority to have transaction without any input.

Litecoin mining has a slight difference from the Bitcoin i.e. the hashing algorithm which is required to solve a block and also number of coins which are distributed each time after a block is solved is different.

As discussed above, Litecoin and Bitcoin differs as they use contrasting algorithms at the time of hashing.

How To Buy Litecoin

If you wish to own some Litecoins, however, don’t want to mine them, you can purchase them with another cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin.

Again, purchase process of Bitcoin and Litecoin is similar. The exchanges today trade in both exchanges for a wire transfer or a credit or a debit card payment. Also the list of currencies with which you can buy Litecoin has grown significantly over the past year. However, Litecoin purchases are made with Bitcoin so far.

Note: You are required to store Litecoins. The original wallet for this currency is ‘Litecoin Core’ which you can install for free on your desktop. However, this downloads the entire Litecoin blockchain, so you’ll need to make sure you have enough storage].

Which are The Litecoin Wallets

As Litecoin is a cryptocurrency, hence it will also be stored in a digital wallet.

It has various kinds of wallets which include software based wallets as well which will reside on your computer or mobile device, as well as physical hardware device.

Another kind of wallet is ‘paper wallet’ which involves generating and printing out a private key on a computer not connected to the web as one of its steps.

Also, all these wallets have private keys which are required to receive and send coins to and from your Litecoin address.

What is Litecoin Block Explorer

Transactions of Litecoin cryptocurrencies are public and also searchable. To read or search for this individual block, transactions or even address balance is through a Litecoin Block Explorer.

Is There a Way To Use Litecoin to Transfer Money

Yes, it is possible to use Litecoin in order to transfer money. In fact, payments with Litecoin are comparatively fast and easy. You can keep the below mentioned points in mind in order to pay someone with Litecoin:

  • Enter the person’s address into your wallet application, or scan the QR Code that corresponds to that address
  • Enter the amount of Litecoin you’d like to send
  • Click on Send

How to Make Money With Litecoin

Litecoin has gained a lot of popularity over the years and numbers of investors have also increased who are making money from the rise and fall of the cryptocurrency. With Litecoin, investors use a very popular strategy i.e. buying Litecoin and then reselling it when the price gets bigger. However, this strategy has its cons as well. Litecoin prices are extremely volatile, sudden rise can lead to sudden fall as well. Hence, it is important to be careful with the investments.

What are the Advantageous of Litecoin

Following are the advantageous with Litecoin as it has successfully activated SegWit:

  • Instant Payments
  • Scalability
  • Low Cost
  • Cross Blockchains

Differences Between Litecoin and Bitcoin

Though Litecoin shares most of the characteristics with Bitcoin, however, it also has slight differences as well, which are as follows:

Litecoin Bitcoin
Founder Charlie Lee Satoshi Nakamoto
Release Date October 7, 2011 January 9, 2008
Release Method Genesis Block Mined Genesis Block Mined
Total Coin Supply 84 Million 21 Million
Blockchain Protocol Proof of Work (POW) Proof of Work (POW)
Usage Digital Money (Silver) Digital Money (Gold)
Privacy Yes Yes
Trackable Yes Yes
Cryptocurrency Used Litoshi Satoshi
Cryptocurrency Symbol LTC BTC
Transaction Fee 0.0001 LTC average Varies based on load on blockchain
Algorithm Scrypt SHA – 256
Blocks Time 2.5 minutes At least 10 minutes
Mining GPUs, Scrypt – ASIC miners ASIC miners
Segwit Scaled Yes Yes

 


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