Litecoin is a digital decentralized peer-to-peer money based on the blockchain technology. It is famous for being fast and cheap. In this article, we are going to investigate one of the most popular cryptocurrencies and go through its token and wallets. Stay with us.

What is Litecoin?

Litecoin is an open-source blockchain-based payment system with a native coin called LTC. Like all other cryptocurrencies, Litecoin is a decentralized form of money whose security is guaranteed through cryptography. Like Bitcoin, Litecoin has to be mined. However, Litecoin is different from Bitcoin in some ways. First of all, Litecoin is much faster than Bitcoin. Litecoin’s transactions are 4 times faster than Bitcoin’s. Another difference is that Bitcoin’s creator is still anonymous, while Litecoin’s creator is a Chinese developer called Charlie Lee. Before developing Litecoin, he worked in companies like Google and Coinbase. There is an interesting metaphor that calls Bitcoin “the digital gold” and Litecoin “the digital silver”. This means that Litecoin is appropriate for cheaper daily purposes. Like Bitcoin, Litecoin is limited in supply. Litecoin’s supply cap is 84 million units.

How does Litecoin work?

As we previously mentioned, Litecoin is based on a proof-of-work consensus algorithm and has to be mined. However, Litecoin’s algorithm, called Scrypt, is simpler than Bitcoin’s. it allows for less complicated computation and less required work and results in faster transactions. For this reason, you don’t need miner devices for mining Litecoin. You can use a graphic card for this purpose. Each Litecoin block needs 2.5 minutes to be created. At the time of writing, Litecoin’s mining reward per block is 12.5 LTC. It is distributed every 840,000 blocks.

Litecoin’s price

At the time of writing, each unit of LTC is being traded at $58.41. Its price peak goes back to May 2021 when it reached more than 370 dollars. We previously mentioned that Litecoin has a limited supply cap of 84 million units. At the time of writing, more than 70 million units have been mined (nearly 84%). Litecoin has a market cap of $4,135,995. It is the nineteenth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Litecoin wallets

Like all cryptocurrencies, you need digital wallets to store LTC. A number of the most popular LTC wallets include:

• CryptoWallet (software)
• Ledger Nano X (hardware)
• Trezor Model T (hardware)
• Exodus (software)
• Guarda (software)
• Electrum (software)
• Atomic Wallet (software)

Conclusion

Litecoin is one of the several blockchains that claims to have aimed at Bitcoin’s scalability challenges. Any blockchain uses a different way for overcoming this challenge, but the solution most of them have used is replacing the proof-of-work consensus algorithm with other more scalable ones. However, Litecoin has decided to use proof of work, but has used a simpler algorithm. Litecoin is now famous for being a scalable and cheap blockchain, and this is why it has maintained its position among world’s most popular cryptocurrencies.