A Deep Dive Into Litecoin (LTC)

Called “digital silver” by GEMINI, Litecoin is the brainchild of MIT alumni Charlie Lee. Released in October 2011 as a Bitcoin fork, it is always in the shadow of its big brother. However, it is not a competitor. Instead, it is for smaller transactions and faster settlements.

TNW (formerly The Next Web) reports, “the top 10 Bitcoin addresses house 5.2 percent of the total supply, the top 100 14.7 percent, and the top 1000 35.0 percent.” Illustrating the original need for Litecoin-a cryptocurrency that is more decentralized.

A few critical features of Litecoin are:

1. A much higher supply than Bitcoin with an 84 million coin ceiling. A 4x increase from Bitcoin.
2. A blockchain capable of supporting higher transaction volumes than Bitcoin. How fast? 2.5 minutes. Compared to 10 minutes for Bitcoin.
3. Wallet Encryption that requires a password to spend Litecoins.
4. A memory-intensive over processor-intensive mining hash. Allowing a more significant number of people to own the currency since no specialized hardware is required.

These all point to a coin designed to function as currency. A means to buy and sell everyday purchases. In the words of Charlie Lee, “Litecoin and Bitcoin will work together to solve the world’s transaction needs in the future.”