At first glance, Litecoin ( LTC ), a decentralized peer-to-peer crypto coin, doesn’t seem to attract as much respect as other top 10 market cap cryptocurrencies. However, LTC provides a useful and interesting application of the original BTC blockchain. Litecoin vs Bitcoin, LTC/BTC is accurately referred to as the Silver vs Gold of cryptocurrency. Litecoin is thought of as a little brother to Bitcoin, BTC.
Because Diversity is critically important in any investment vehicle we must consider Altcoins when establishing our crypto investing plan. While Bitcoin, the world's first cryptocurrency, remains the de facto crypto coin, Litecoin has managed to garner a broad investment interest. As such, Litecoin can be an attractive investment tool that can be used to diversify your crypto holdings.
When it comes to security Litcoin is comparable to Bitcoin. The blockchain provides transparency, and of course ultimately the security of your wallet sets the threshold of your security.
LTC and BTC are decentralized peer-to-peer payment systems.
LTC has faster confirmation speeds than BTC
LTC has much lower transaction costs than BTC
Let’s examine three of the main advantages of LTC:
LTC/BTC – Cost
The fees associated with sending any denomination of LTC hovers around 2 cents. When compared to BTC which has an average transaction cost of approximately 35 cents it is easy to see the transaction cost advantages of LTC over BTC. The costs of a Bitcoin transaction seem to rise dramatically during peak traffic whereas Litcoin's fees seem to remain much more constant. Litcoin gives us the option to pay for everyday goods without getting soaked with High fees that accumulate rapidly.
LTC/BTC – Speed
Historically speaking the transaction confirmation speeds is a huge factor in how readily digital coin gets adopted. An LTC transaction confirmation takes, on average 2 - 5 minutes whereas BTC can take anywhere from about 10 minutes to over 2,500 minutes. Litecoin’s network is far more efficient and can confirm transactions much more constantly and rapidly. For every block of Bitcoin confirmed there are four equally sized Litecoin blocks confirmed.
LTC Mining
One of the goals in the creation of LTC was to learn from BTC and more evenly distribute hash power. Litecoin aims to keep hash power decentralized. The BTC chain can never hold more than 21 million Bitcoins while the Litecoin supply can be as high as 84 million.
Litecoin uses the Scrypt hashing algorithm which consumes much less processing power than the SHA-256 algorithm that Bitcoin uses. An algorithm that relies on high–speed RAM v.s. the extremely high CPU consumption of Bitcoin’s SHA-256 algorithm gives the single-player miner a distinct advantage.
LTC churns out block after block all the while retaining lower transaction fees as BTC grapples with serious scalability problems as a direct derivative of its higher transaction costs. True, there are not nearly as many people using LTC as BTC and time will tell whether or not LTC will face similar scalability issues, but for now, there is a large margin of ability in Litecoin’s future!
So for what it is worth my opinion is that LTC/BTC is a very attractive option!
One of the goals in the creation of LTC was to learn from BTC and more evenly distribute hash power. Litecoin aims to keep hash power decentralized. The BTC chain can never hold more than 21 million Bitcoins while the Litecoin supply can be as high as 84 million.
Litecoin uses the Scrypt hashing algorithm which consumes much less processing power than the SHA-256 algorithm that Bitcoin uses. An algorithm that relies on high–speed RAM v.s. the extremely high CPU consumption of Bitcoin’s SHA-256 algorithm gives the single-player miner a distinct advantage.
LTC churns out block after block all the while retaining lower transaction fees as BTC grapples with serious scalability problems as a direct derivative of its higher transaction costs. True, there are not nearly as many people using LTC as BTC and time will tell whether or not LTC will face similar scalability issues, but for now, there is a large margin of ability in Litecoin’s future!
So for what it is worth my opinion is that LTC/BTC is a very attractive option!
