Litecoin is a cryptocurrency that enables instant payments to anyone in the world and that can be efficiently mined with consumer-grade hardware.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a form of electronic cash. It is a decentralized digital currency without a central bank or single administrator that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries
The special thing about the technology of Bitcoin is it’s blockchain. A blockchainis a huge digital record of trades. The record is stored across a network of thousands of computers called nodes. Transactions are put together into groups called blocks before being added to the blockchain. The nodes that verify blocks get a reward for the work they have done. The reward is new currency. On Bitcoin’s blockchain the reward is 12.5 new BTC. This process is called mining because it’s a bit like digging for gold!
Mining for Bitcoin is expensive. You need a powerful computer to do it and the process uses a lot of electricity. It is also quite slow. Each new block takes about ten minutes to get added to the blockchain. This is where Charlie Lee and Litecoin come in.
The rules for deciding how Bitcoin mining works are called SHA-256. It was these rules that Charlie Lee wanted to change. The new rules he created are called script. Mining with script is 4 four times faster than SHA-256 and requires a lot less electricity.
Each new block of transactions only takes 2.5 minutes to be added to the Litecoin blockchain. The reward for each verified block is 25 new Litecoin (LTC).
Bitcoin fans say that SHA-256 is safer than scrypt. They say this because SHA-256 takes longer and is therefore more likely to spot errors. They think that scrypt rushes the process of verification.
However, Litecoin fans think that the changes Charlie Lee made to the rules of Bitcoin are much better. As it makes Litecoin a cheaper and faster platform. Neither blockchain has ever been hacked.
Buying Bitcoin now is expensive and a bit risky. As an investment, it might be too late to start buying Bitcoin. The price has gone down a lot this year. However, Litecoin is newer and could still become as popular as Bitcoin. Its growth has been slow but steady.
They both have limited supplies. There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin and there will only ever be 84 million Litecoin. This means they could both become good stores of value.
Bitcoin is the oldest and most trusted cryptocurrency. It will also reach its supply limit first. Three quarters of all Bitcoin has already been mined. This means that its value should become predictable and reliable in the near future, just like gold!
Bitcoin is more popular and it’s taken as payment in more places. It also makes use of zero-confirmation transactions to make buying things faster.
Trade with both of these popular coins at :
