Litecoin – the silver to Bitcoin’s gold?

Litecoin’s graph looks very similar to the Bitcoin graph. It is one of the oldest altcoins, and it was ranked on the second place at the market capitalization ranking for a long time. In January 2017, Litecoin’s price reached over $300, and it very quickly dropped down by two times, to skyrocket again. Then, it has been continuously falling throughout 2018 to achieve a “modest” two-digit price.

Litecoin predictions

According to Smartereum.com, Litecoin is on a rise and it is going to reach even $600 by the end of 2019! One of the reasons are growing prices of Bitcoin’s trading which cause the migration to Litecoin project.

In addition, the popularity of Coinbase is growing, which supports four cryptocurrencies, one of which is Litecoin. Because Coinbase adds 100,000 new users daily, this might bring a very positive gain for Litecoin.

Going further, more and more investors start to be aware of Litecoin’s advantages over Bitcoin, e.g. faster and cheaper transactions. However, this point is quite controversial, as many specialists don’t agree with it because they claim that with higher speed in Litecoin project, comes also lower security.

One of the other reasons why LTC price is predicted to rise is that media start paying more and more attention to this project. For example, recently, we wrote about Litecoin being a sponsor of a UFC fight! However, it is said that perception of people can harm the name Litecoin. Many people seem to think that this is the same as Bitcoin. Perhaps it will take some time before Litecoin reaches the significant position and balance that Bitcoin presents each year. 

Almost no cost payments 

Overall, Litecoin was designed to allow instant, almost no cost payments around the world. It is a decentralized global payment network. It is an open source, a peer-to-peer system which was created in 2011 by Charlie Lee. It is a fork to the Bitcoin Core client. Litecoin is called a test net for Bitcoin. Said Kyle Samani, a co-founder of MultiCoin capital, doesn’t agree with this thesis. 

“Litecoin in my view has no reason to exist. It was a fork of Bitcoin. It’s just been sitting around,” Samani said. “The only investment thesis I’ve ever heard for Litecoin is it’s a test net for Bitcoin, but that’s not an investment thesis.”

Litecoin is characterised by much faster blocktime than Bitcoin, but is it really its advantage? Edmin Gun Sirer doesn’t agree with that kind of statement.

He goes even further and claims that Litecoin is not comparable to Bitcoin.

 Litecoin not designed to compete with Bitcoin

Even Charlie Lee, a co-founder of Litecoin, claims that it was not designed to compete with Bitcoin. He said that it was created for smaller transactions, like buying a coffee or paying in restaurants.

Charlie Lee is a former Google employee, and a former CoinBase engineering director. In 2017 he announced on Reddit that he sold out almost all of his Litecoin’s holdings due to “perceived conflict of interest”.

Four times bigger 

What are other features of Litecoin? C++ is its code language, and it uses different (Scrypt) than Bitcoin (SHA-256) mining algorithm. Its total supply is four times bigger than Bitcoin’s one (84 million). At the time when we publish this article, Litecoin’s circulating supply is equal to 60 million LTC. What’s more, Litecoin is not dApp platform.

Forks everywhere

Litecoin Cash (LCC) is a Litecoin’s fork which, such as BTC, uses SHA-256 cryptocurrency mining algorithm, has ten times bigger total supply (840 million), and has better difficulty adjustment. There is also 10:1 Claim Ratio, which means that for every 1 LTC you held at the fork block, you can claim 10 LCC. 

Charlie Lee doesn’t identify himself with LCC, calling it a scam on Twitter.

“The Litecoin team and I are not forking Litecoin. Any forks that you hear about is a scam trying to confuse you to think it’s related to Litecoin. Don’t fall for it and definitely don’t enter your private keys or seed into their website or client. Be careful out there! “

LCC price today:

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Under one second transfer

As open source project, Litecoin’s quality is that it allows implementing useful technological improvements, such as the Lightning Network – a platform which fosters faster transactions. In general, Litecoin works faster than Bitcoin and it is cheaper to use, but it is less secure. There was made via the Lightning Network a transfer of a very small amount of LTC from Zurich to San Francisco in under one second in May 2017.

Like Bitcoin, Litecoin uses Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism, and it is a divisible currency (Litecoin’s equivalent to Bitcoin’s satoshi is called litoshi). Like NEO, Litecoin is very popular in China.

 The opposite of most altcoins

What are the cons of Litecoin? Given the fact that it is a fork of Bitcoin, it is not likely that many new and innovative ideas will appear in this project, as opposed to most altcoins. Another problem is that Bitcoin implemented SegWit after Litecoin introduced it in May 2017. SegWit is a protocol that changes the way data is stored. After Bitcoin launched it on its platform in August 2017, the attractiveness of Litecoin’s offer significantly decreased. 

Silver or rather bronze?

Still, in the opinion of many people, Litecoin is seen as a copy of Bitcoin. It is already a very interesting project, which, however, arouses a lot of controversies, even meeting completely opposite views that Litecoin can not be compared with Bitcoin at all. If Litecoin can cope with these harmful opinions, for example, thanks to the more frequent appearance in the media, this project will definitely be able to “blossom”.