What Is Litecoin? A Complete Guide

What is Litecoin? Many traders and investors are familiar with the name, yet they struggle to understand the value of Litecoin and the purpose it serves. Here, we provide our readers with a complete guide on Litcoin.

WHAT IS LITECOIN? THE HISTORY OF LITECOIN

As its name suggests, Litecoin (or LTC) is a ‘lighter’ version of Bitcoin. It solves many problems that Bitcoin faces, with one of them being the limited transaction speed. Many people see LTC as Bitcoin’s little brother.

LTC was first created by Charlie Lee in October 2011. Since then, the cryptocurrency has been hugely successful and consistently among the top 10 largest crypto by market capitalisation. Charlie is a computer scientist who has worked for Coinbase. His credentials has helped to develop a strong community of followers for the cryptocurrency.

LTC is also often used as a ‘test network’ for Bitcoin, because of its similarities. Developers who wanted to test new features for Bitcoin, often did it first on Litecoin. For example, well-known Bitcoin projects such as Segregated Witness, the Lightning Network and Atomic Swaps were all implemented on Litecoin first.

WHAT IS LITECOIN? HOW IS IT DIFFERENT TO BITCOIN?

LTC transacts at a much faster pace compared to Bitcoin. The key reason for this is LTC having a shorter confirmation time. LTC’s block confirmation time is 2.5 minutes. Compared to Bitcoin’s 10 minutes on average, this is 4 times faster.

Bitcoin is one of the most widely used cryptocurrencies in the world. Litecoin, on the other hand, isn’t as popular and therefore is much less likely to have a congested network. This also helps to keep the transaction fees lower, as transactions are not competing as much with each other to get priority.

Litecoin is often known as cryptocurrency’s ‘silver’ compared to Bitcoin’s ‘gold’. It has many similar characteristics compared to Bitcoin. Also, in addition to having faster transaction speeds, there are also more LTCs in circulation compared to Bitcoin. There can be a maximum of 84 million Litecoins in circulation, compared to Bitcoin’s 21 million.

IS LTC SAFE TO INVEST IN?

Litecoin is one of the most reputable and widely followed cryptocurrencies. If investing in Bitcoin is like investing in gold, then investing Litecoin is like investing in silver. Its market capitalisation is minimal compared to that of Bitcoin, but it is widely traded with high liquidity and market depth.

For the reasons above, if you are looking to have a diversified cryptocurrency portfolio, then LTC is not a bad choice.

LOOKING TO BUY LTC WITH AUD?

Look no further, Coinstash is one of the few Australian platforms that allows its users to buy LTC with AUD. We have deep liquidity into USD markets, therefore the ability to provide our users with some of the best prices available.