Join our Telegram Channel!Get Bitcoin News stories in Telegram × Dismiss05 Jun 2017: Litecoin can be your first cryptocurrency investment Open Source: What is Litecoin?Created by a Google employee, Charles Lee, in 2011, Litecoin is the sixth largest cryptocurrency with regards to market capitalization.It is a peer-to-peer decentralized Internet currency, which has almost zero payment cost and facilitates instant payment.It operates on an open source software; released under MIT/X11 license it enables individuals to "run, modify and copy" the software to suit their own needs.Bitcoin: How is it different from Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?It is considered to be less difficult than other cryptocurrencies since it uses "scrypt" algorithm instead of SHA 256 that Bitcoin uses.As far as the transaction fees are concerned, Bitcoin charges lower at 0.0001 BTC compared to Litecoin's 0.02 LTC.Litecoin takes only 2.5 minutes, as compared to Bitcoin's 10 minutes, when it comes to blocktime, which ensures receipt of payment.

Exchange: How to use it?A user needs to download a desktop application from Litecoin's website, which is a modified version of Bitcoin-QT client.This application will work as a wallet for storing your Litecoins.One can either mine Litecoins or buy them in exchange for normal currency or other cryptocurrencies from places like Litecoin's forum, BitBargainUK, bittylicious, BTC-E, BTER, Kraken, CoinMKT etc. Usage: How is it beneficial compared to other cryptocurrencies?bitcoin farm fake or realLitecoin is perfect for small transactions because of the variable transaction fee that it incurs.ethereal wings of a dragonflyWhile discussing the future of Litecoin and how it might benefit small businesses, Charles Lee, the creator said, "One possibility is that Bitcoin will be used for more expensive purchases, whereas Litecoin will take up the micro-transaction space."bitcoin fog not working

Blockchain: Easy to mine and use In Litecoin, Blockchain generates more frequently, which enables higher transaction volume than its alternatives like Bitcoin.Litecoin Wallet security is also top-notch, users have to enter a password everytime they want to spend the coins; it safeguards against malware attacks but is also flexible enough to give you a normal access, if you just want to keep a track of your transactions and balance.Mining: How to mine it?black halo bitcoinThe mining process includes solving of blocks, which form a cryptographic coin network.bitcoin op de beursThese blocks contain hashes which are a chunk of encrypted information that, when solved by the user, provides a number of coins depending and varying upon the cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins, Litecoins etc.bitcoin bce

The Blockchain feature of cryptocurrency records the ownership of the coins.RAM: Weighing in the pros and cons Unlike Bitcoin, which makes use of an SHA 256 hashing algorithm, Litecoin makes use of a "scrypt" algorithm, which tends to use a large amount of RAM memory to perform mining.However, Litecoin does provide a four time larger cap at 84 million coins, while Bitcoin provides the same at 21 million coins.Option: What are some alternatives?One of the alternatives to Litecoin is Feathercoin, created in 2013.It provides the same security features as Litecoin, but is even easier to use and rewards users with coins 16 times more than what Bitcoin provides, after solving a block.Another alternative like Bitcoin, Terracoin uses the same SHA 256 algorithm for mining, which makes it difficult to mine with lower-end machines.Coinbase has just rolled out full support for Litecoin, its third cryptocurrency.Users will be able to buy, sell, send and store Litecoin from Coinbase’s website or mobile apps, using easy payment methods like a credit/debit card or PayPal.

While Coinbase was founded as a platform to transact only with Bitcoin, the company has since announced its intent to add other cryptocurrencies with the broader goal of becoming a “digital currency company.” Last summer Coinbase added support for Ethereum, which is now the second most-popular digital currency with a market cap about one-third the size of Bitcoin’s market cap.At the time, the reasoning was that Coinbase saw Ethereum’s focus on smart contracts as a tangible improvement over Bitcoin, and not just another alt-coin that doesn’t serve any real function.Interestingly, Litecoin’s creator, Charlie Lee, has been director of engineering at Coinbase for nearly four years.And while there were always ongoing discussions about adding Litecoin to the platform, they didn’t really materialize until recently.Lee explained that it’s been a slow few years for Litecoin.While the digital currency had a heyday in late 2013 with its price spiking to over $50 per coin and over $1 billion in total market cap, it quickly fell back to earth and basically remained flat for three years.

So why the sudden change?If you’re familiar with Bitcoin you know that the community is facing an internal struggle with deciding how to scale the currency for the future.Essentially, Bitcoin’s original code wasn’t designed to process this many transactions on a daily basis, and now the network is charging too much per transaction, which takes too long to confirm.Luckily there are two main proposed solutions: Bitcoin Unlimited, which aims to get rid of the block size limit altogether, and Segregated Witness (SegWit), which wants to slightly increase the block size while also moving some non-essential data out of the transaction and off the blockchain.Both solutions would require a “fork,” meaning the majority of miners would have to agree on the changes and signal to slightly alter the currency’s blockchain.So far the Bitcoin community has been unable to reach a consensus on how to fix the scaling issue.A few months ago Lee and the Litecoin community decided to work on implementing SegWit into Litecoin.

And after heated discussions with the biggest players in the Litecoin mining community, the group reached consensus about a week ago to implement SegWit.Last week, miners “voted” with their hash power to signal for SegWit, and the actual code will be implemented next week.While Litecoin is still small enough that it’s not suffering from the same scaling issues as is Bitcoin, the team thought it’d be a good way to bring something exciting to Litecoin.Plus, SegWit has some other benefits besides just increasing network capacity.It prevents malleability, which is essentially the risk (that currently exists in Bitcoin) that third parties can alter transactions before they are confirmed by the network.Implementing SegWit will also allow Litecoin to experiment with something called Lightening Networks — which would essentially allow for instant Litecoin payments off the main blockchain, with transactions only settling on the chain when they need to.And perhaps best of all, these recent developments have rekindled interest in the Litecoin currency, sending the price (and more importantly, volume) skyrocketing.