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Few months ago when I started to write the crypto blogs, one of my posts was about the types of cryptocurrencies. How are they categorized and the top 5 cryptocurrencies on the market. In the following posts I want to go a little bit deeper and see why some of those cryptocurrencies are the best for investing.
DISCLAIMER: I want to warn you –I am not a legal financial advisor. Before investing into any of the cryptocurrencies you should do some additional research and talk to a legal financial advisor. I am a crypto enthusiast and my posts regarding the cryptocurrencies are simply educational and informative.
Bitcoin still remains the number one currency for investing. Also another one is Bitcoin Cash that I have covered in my previous post. If you have missed that post you can always check on my blog where you will find a list of all my blogs. Today’ post is going to be about Litecoin. The coin that is known as the Silver. If Bitcoin is the Gold then Litecoin is the silver. So let’s find out more about Litecoin.
Litecoin is actually the first Altcoin. Litecoin was created on the 7th of October 2011 by Charlie Lee, who is an ex-Google employee. Despite Satoshi Nakamoto the creator of Bitcoin, which identity is still a mystery, Litecoin’s creator Charlie Lee is very active on social media and his blog. Litecoin was created not to compete against Bitcoin but instead to act as a complimentary payment solution alternative. It was designed to complement Bitcoin by solving problems like concentrated mining pools and transaction timings.
The official Litecoin sites says:
Litecoin is a peer-to-peer internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world.
Litceoin is also open source, decentralized, and backed by cryptographic math to secure transactions. What Charlie Lee did, he modified the code and protocol from Bitcoin’s core code, in a way he considered best in order to achieve large-scale adoption of the currency. Lee wanted to reduce the block confirmation timings of 10 minutes to 2.5 minutes, so that way a higher volume of transactions could be confirmed. And by doing that Lee speed up the Litecoin transactions x4 (when you will compare it to Bitcoin). Because the Litecoin’s blockchain can handle higher transaction volume, the network supports more transactions without need to modify the software in the future.
The miners of Litecoin same like in Bitcoin are awarded. The difference is with Litecoin they get rewarded 50 Litecoins per block, while with Bitcoin they get 1 Bitcoin. The halving of the blocks is the same like Bitcoin at every 4 years. There are 84 million Litecoin’s to be mined which is 4 times as many as Bitcoin.
A very interesting fact is that Litecoin since it’s release on GitHub in 2011 until 2016 didn’t had any full time developers. Only Charlie Lee (the creator of Litecoin) and Warren Togami (the lead developer) were associated with the Litecoin open source project. In 2016, a developer under the alias name ‘’Shaolinfry’’ joined Litecoin. In the meantime Charlie Lee used to work also with Coinbase (crypto exchange) and in Jun 9 2017 he left Coinbase and Tweeted:
Today’s my last day at Coinbase. I will miss working with you all. I’m going to shift my focus to Litecoin now. To the moon!
Litecoin works in a similar way to Bitcoin. Despite the Bitcoin boom, Litecoin has proven to be a safe haven, because is less volatile unlike Bitcoin. Litecoin has minimal transaction fees in comparison to Bitcoin, which makes it an obvious choice for merchants. The transaction confirmation timing is 4 times faster than Bitcoin. At the moment Litecoin is acting as a testing ground for blockchain solutions such as Segwit, Atomic Swaps and Lightning Networks. In 2017 Litecoin implemented Segwit and experimenting Atomic Swaps.
What is Segwit? Segwit or Segregated Witness is a blockchain scaling solution. In simple words SegWit means separating the witness signatures from the transactions.
For example: Imagine Litecoin blocks as wagons of a train which carry passengers and their luggage every 2.5 minutes. This is the time for Litecoin to create a new block. Now, you want to carry even more passengers in the same train car. To do this, you start sending the passengers luggage separately. And now there is more space on the wagon for more passengers.
So, for every 1 MB Litecoin block, that block carries a transaction and their witness(I.e. signatures) every 2.5 minutes. If we start sending the signatures separately, then more transactions would be able to happen in that 1 MB block. And that is what Litecoin SegWit did. The Litecoin community separated transactions and signatures.
Another mind blowing feature that Litecoin has achieved after Charlie Lee returned full time on the project is Atomic Swaps. Atomic Swap in simple words is a kind of on-chain barter exchange of cryptocurrencies. It is a way of exchanging two different cryptocurrencies without any intermediary exchange.
Example: I can send you Liteoin’s to your Litecoin address and you can send me Bitcoins at my Bitcoin address for return. This kind of swap can be very difficult. Because it is not the same blockchain. And there is a need of a third trusted party like some exchange for example Bittrex or Poloniex. Bittrex and Poloniex will charge certain fees. But, with Atomic Swap technology this is free and is with timeout. It gives every party at least 24 hours to redeem their coins on the other blockchain before a refund can be performed. This technology is still in its infancy and it will take some time until it hits mainstream adoption.
If you are thinking of investing in Litecoin you can buy from the most popular exchanges like: Bitfinex, Binance, Bittrex, Poloniex.
After buying Litecoins the best way to store them is on some of the most popular Cold (hardware) wallets like Ledger Nano S or Trezor. Both of these wallets support Litecoin and they are not that expensive. The Ledger Nano S you can find it under 100$.
If you are planning to do trading with some of your Litecoins, the best way is to keep certain amount on your Cold Wallet and the ones for trading you can keep them on a Cloud wallet. For the Desktop you can use Exodus which is a multy cryptocurrency desktop wallet that supports also Litecoin. Exodus is easy to use and has a high security.
IF you plan to use a mobile wallet then you can use Jaxx. Jaxx has one seed key recovery phrase feature which enables you to restore your Litecoins in case your device is lost or damaged.
No matter which one you will choose, always go for the trusted ones. Always make some research before storing your coins somewhere that is not safe. The cold wallets are the best for storing your coins for long term. You can have a look at my blog about crypto wallets and find out which ones are the best for storing your coins.
The current price of Litecoin is at $83. Which makes it not so expensive for investing. Through the years Litecoin has established itself as the trusted coin. It is always in the top 5 coins, regarding its smaller price compared to Bitcoin. Litecoin has so much potential for growth and wide adoption. There may be leaner coins and some with more advanced features than Litecoin today, but Litecoin has firmly cemented itself as one of the most important cryptocurrencies. It might not quite be the silver to Bitcoin as is widely known, but still it is very precious, and it doesn’t seem likely to fall from favor anytime soon.
Until the next post…. BEFORE INVESTING IN ANY OF THE COINS, CONSULT WITH A LEGAL FINACIAL ADVISOR.
Thank you for reading
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