What’s next for Litecoin (LTC)?
- is an open source network
- Litecoin is completely decentralized
- It offers speed as well as scalability
- Litecoin has been continuously improved since its inception
Litecoin explained
Litecoin was created on October 7th, 2011 by Charlie Lee via an open source client on GitHub who had a masters degree in computer science from MIT and even worked as a software engineer for Google (NASDAQ 🙂 for many years. Litecoin is a fork; This means that Litecoin uses the Bitcoin source code. The maximum Litecoin offer is 84,000,000. The Litecoin network went live on October 13, 2011.
This currency was invented and developed to enable fast, secure and inexpensive payments through the use of unique properties of blockchain technology.
It differs from Bitcoin in the hashing algorithm used, the hard cap, the block transaction times, etc. Litecoin has a blocking time of 2.5 minutes and low transaction fees, which makes it convenient for microtransactions and point-of-sale payments.
The success of Litecoin lies in the fact that it is simple and has many useful benefits. More than 2,000 merchants and stores accept LTC around the world. The main advantage of Litecoin is that it is fast and inexpensive. This makes it a solid alternative to Bitcoin, especially in developing countries where transaction fees can be a deciding factor in which cryptocurrency makes logical sense to invest in.
Litecoin uses the PoW (Proof-of-Work) consensus algorithm to ensure that transactions are confirmed quickly, efficiently and without errors.
As a result, Litecoin trades faster than Bitcoin due to its faster confirmation time. This is the time between sending a cryptocurrency transaction and the time the assets are received. As mentioned earlier, Litecoin’sLitecoin time is 2.5 minutes and Bitcoin’sBitcoin time is 10 minutes.
Only a limited amount of Litecoin will ever exist. This is because only 84 million tokens will ever exist. Since Litecoin is cheaper than Bitcoin, many people will say that Bitcoin can be classified as gold and Litecoin as silver in terms of real equivalents. However, this is great for Litecoin as its lower price makes it much more convenient for smaller payments.
Litecoin history
Litecoin was one of the first altcoins to hit the cryptocurrency market. The main reason it dominated all altcoins after its release is because it has made changes compared to Bitcoin that have been very useful, such as: B. Faster processing and lower transaction fees.
Now the developer, Charlie Lee, essentially wanted to make a cheaper, faster version of Bitcoin. Once that was achieved, the community began to grow and by 2013 it was one of the most popular currencies in the crypto market. When we fast-forwarded a little to May 2017, Litecoin was listed by Coinbase and the price began to soar to the highest levels. Over time, it became a test network as a developer who wanted to implement Bitcoin functions and tried to run them on Litecoin first to test them.
Litecoin algorithm
While Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm, Litecoin uses a newer algorithm called Scrypt. Now don’t be fooled by the fact that it’s newer as both of them take a lot of processing power to generate many possible solutions for their functions. When it comes to hashing performance, Scrypt-based protocols have a lower hash rate than Sha-256-based protocols.
Litecoin mining
New Litecoins are created and can be brought into circulation through the mining process.
Litecoin mining, as the name suggests, is the processing of a block of transactions into the Litecoin blockchain itself. For this mining, miners have to solve algorithms, and the first to find a solution is rewarded with tokens as a means of payment.
The blockchain serves as a record for all Litecoin owners. Litecoin miners are rewarded with 12.5 new Litecoin for every block they can process. The amount that miners can earn is to be cut in half every four years. Keep in mind that mining premiums will halve to 6.25 Litecoin in August 2023.
If you want to get involved in Litecoin mining yourself, you need to invest in reputable hardware. In other words, you need a graphics processing unit (GPU) or an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) machine to do the calculations necessary to achieve a solution.
With miners constantly racing to solve an algorithm, they had to enlarge their mining equipment, which resulted in high electricity bills. After completing the setup process, you need to set up an e-wallet in which the Litecoins can be deposited after purchase. Litecoins can either be placed on a hot or cold wallet.
A hot wallet is a wallet that is directly connected to the internet. The most common types of hot wallets include phone applications, web-based wallets, and desktop wallets. Cold wallets are wallets that are not connected to the internet. These are generally physical, real-world storage devices that hold your private keys or paper wallets that you print out.
Litecoin technology implementations
Litecoin implemented SegWit in 2017, which was followed by Bitcoin. This technology can prevent excess data from being written into new blocks. This can free up space for blocks and store more transaction data, increasing the number of transactions per second, or TPS. As such, SegWit managed to double the TPC of Bitcoin’sBitcoin from 3 to 7 and the TPC of Litecoin’sLitecoin from 28 to 56.
Litecoin also supports the Lightning Network, an off-chain solution that increases TPS even further. This is done by opening a payment channel between two couples that have multiple transactions taking place and only the final balance is written to the blockchain by the network nodes once the payment channel is completely closed.
Atomic Swaps allows a user to exchange different types of cryptocurrency directly to other people without a central service, e.g. B. through automated contracts where the specified cryptocurrency is released to a user’s wallet when the conditions are met. Litecoin conducted many of the first atomic swaps with Bitcoin, Decred, and Vertcoin in 2017.
On the downside
- It’s open source and a branch of the open source BTC Core Client.
- It’s faster than many competing cryptocurrencies.
- It has a larger volume as there are more Litecoins available than Bitcoins.
- Low transaction fees are always a plus.
The future of Litecoin
At the time of writing, February 27, 2021, Litecoin is valued at $ 175.18 and has a trading volume of $ 5,125,727,057. That’s a huge drop from the $ 226 value held on February 21, 2021 a week ago.
According to many forecasters, including the Economic Forecast Agency, Litecoin projections suggest it could soar to a potential $ 260 in January 2022 and drop back to the $ 100 mark throughout the year.
Now LTC whales have gone on a buying frenzy that saw them buying lots of coins over the past month. The digital asset defended a critical level of support and sought a rebound.
Now remember that the Litecoin price has not done well lately as it has fallen around 26% over the past week while other cryptocurrencies like and have also fallen around 20%. This is due to the underperformance of the crypto sector, which is why many cryptocurrencies have lost value. This could be because famous people like Elon Musk said Bitcoin and Ether were expensive and Janet Yellen criticized Bitcoin.
It seems that every time someone in influential talks about cryptocurrencies, or if they get viral coverage due to a bad aspect, the price suddenly drops by a huge amount. In many cases, however, it will recur over a short period of time.
This allows the conclusion that Litecoin has an increased level of volatility, as can be seen in the charts from the end of 2020 with astronomical price fluctuations and wide intraday ranges. If we look at the history of Litecoin, we can clearly see that its price runs in parallel with the price movements of Bitcoin and generally follows the same direction.
If the economy regains its all-time highs over the long term, many banks could resume their interest rates, making traditional currencies attractive to large investors. This could shift funds away from cryptocurrencies and result in Litecoin having less of an impact.
However, Litecoin is regularly introduced by institutions and private investors. Cryptocurrencies are therefore becoming more and more mainstream as new funds are constantly being traded in the market, which increases prices and the level of support.
With that said, we predict the price could stay around the $ 100 mark through 2021 through 2025.
Read on on DailyCoin
Comments are closed.