Litecoin- The Digital Silver
- Tanishq Wadhwani
- May 18, 2021
- 10 min read
Twitter: Litecoin is a powerful, political and economical tool which anyone, anywhere can use without permission to transact with anyone else in the world and partake in a genuinely global economy.
Litecoin, launched in 2011, was among the first cryptocurrencies to follow in the footsteps of Bitcoin and has often been referred to as “silver to Bitcoin’s gold.” It was created by Charlie Lee, an MIT graduate and former Google engineer. Litecoin is based on an open-source global payment network that is not controlled by any central authority and uses "scrypt" as a proof of work, which can be decoded with the help of CPUs of consumer-grade. Although Litecoin is like Bitcoin in many ways, it has a faster block generation rate and hence offers a faster transaction confirmation time. Other than developers, there are a growing number of merchants who accept Litecoin.
Both Bitcoin and Litecoin are cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, which originated in 2009, is the dominant brand; Litecoin, founded two years later, is one of its leading competitors. Litecoin can produce a greater number of coins than Bitcoin and its transaction speed is faster, but these factors are largely psychological boons for the investor and don't impact the value or usability of the currency.
Bitcoin and Litecoin use fundamentally different cryptographic algorithms: Bitcoin uses the longstanding SHA-256 algorithm, and Litecoin uses a newer algorithm called Scrypt.
What Is Litecoin (LTC)?
Litecoin (LTC) is a cryptocurrency that was designed to provide fast, secure and low-cost payments by leveraging the unique properties of blockchain technology.
The cryptocurrency was created based on the Bitcoin (BTC) protocol, but it differs in terms of the hashing algorithm used, hard cap, block transaction times and a few other factors. Litecoin has a block time of just 2.5 minutes and extremely low transaction fees, making it suitable for micro-transactions and point-of-sale payments.
Litecoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub on Oct. 7, 2011, and the Litecoin Network went live five days later on Oct. 13, 2011. Since then, it has exploded in both usage and acceptance among merchants and has counted among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization for most of its existence.
The cryptocurrency was created by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee, who intended Litecoin to be a "lite version of Bitcoin," in that it features many of the same properties as Bitcoin—albeit lighter in weight.
What Is Litecoin Used For?
Given all the hoopla around its prices and market cap, it may seem that Litecoin exists mainly to be bought and sold back and forth, to paraphrase the old traders' joke about soybeans. In actuality, though, Litecoin— like all cryptocurrencies—is a form of digital money. So it can be used by individuals and institutions to purchase things and to transfer funds between accounts.
Its relative speed and cheapness make it ideal for smaller, everyday transactions. Participants operate directly, without the use of an intermediary like a bank, credit card company, or payment processing service.
What Makes Litecoin Unique?
As of January 2021, Litecoin is one of the most widely accepted cryptocurrencies, and more than 2,000 merchants and stores now accept LTC across the globe.
Its main benefit comes from its speed and cost-effectiveness. Litecoin transactions are typically confirmed in just minutes, and transaction fees are nearly negligible. This makes it an attractive alternative to Bitcoin in developing countries, where transaction fees may be the deciding factor on which cryptocurrency to support.
In late 2020, Litecoin also saw the release of the MimbleWimble (MW) testnet, which is used to test Mimblewimble-based confidential transactions on Litecoin. Once this feature is available on the mainnet, Litecoin users will also benefit from greatly enhanced privacy and fungibility.
Who Are the Founders of Litecoin?
As previously touched on, Litecoin was founded by Charlie Lee, an early cryptocurrency adopter and a name held in high regard in the cryptocurrency industry.
Charlie Lee, also known as “Chocobo,” is an early Bitcoin miner and computer scientist, who was a former software engineer for Google. In addition, Charlie Lee held the role of director of engineering at Coinbase between 2015 and 2017 before moving on to other ventures.
Today, Charlie Lee is an outspoken advocate of cryptocurrencies and is the managing director of the Litecoin Foundation—a non-profit organization that works alongside the Litecoin Core Development team to help advance Litecoin.
Besides Lee, the Litecoin Foundation also includes three other individuals on the board of directors: Xinxi Wang, Alan Austin and Zing Yang — all of which are accomplished in their own right.
How Many Litecoin (LTC) Coins Are There in Circulation?
Like most proof-of-work (POW) cryptocurrencies, the amount of Litecoin in circulation gradually increases with each newly mined block.
As of January 2021, 66.245 million LTC have already been mined out of a total maximum supply of 84 million. The Litecoin Foundation recently estimated it will be well over 100 years until Litecoin reaches full dilution (around the year 2140) — since the number of LTC mined per block decreases every four years as part of the block reward halving schedule.
Around 500,000 LTC was instamined on day one after the LTC genesis block was mined and Charlie Lee and presumably other early Litecoin developers were among the first miners.
Despite this, as a fairly distributed asset, the Litecoin developers or Charlie Lee do not receive any direct profits from the operation of Litecoin—other than anything they may earn as part of the regular mining process.
How Is the Litecoin Network Secured?
As a blockchain-based cryptocurrency, Litecoin is secured by incredibly strong cryptographic defenses — making it practically impossible to crack.
Like Bitcoin and several other cryptocurrencies, Litecoin uses the PoW consensus algorithm to ensure transactions are confirmed quickly and without errors. The combined strength of the Litecoin mining network prevents double-spends and a range of other attacks, while ensuring the network has 100% uptime.
Bitcoin vs. Litecoin: An Overview
Over the past several years, public interest in cryptocurrencies has fluctuated dramatically. But with the advent of the 2020s, investor interest in cryptos has surged. The main focus of this interest has been Bitcoin, which has long been the dominant name in cryptocurrency—not surprising since it was the first digital money to really catch on.
Since the founding of Bitcoin in 2009, however, hundreds of other cryptocurrencies have entered the market. Although it has proven increasingly difficult for digital coins to stand out given the crowded field, Litecoin (LTC) is one of the non-Bitcoin crypto that has managed to stand up to the competition.
Similarities Between Bitcoin and Litecoin
On the surface, Bitcoin and Litecoin have a lot in common. At the most basic level, they are both decentralized cryptocurrencies. Whereas fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar or the Japanese yen rely on the backing of central banks for value, circulation control, and legitimacy, cryptocurrencies are not subject to a centralized authority: They rely only on the cryptographic integrity of the network itself.
Litecoin was launched in 2011 by former Google engineer Charlie Lee, who announced the debut of the "lite version of Bitcoin" via a posted message on a popular Bitcoin forum. From its founding, Litecoin was seen as being created in reaction to Bitcoin. Indeed, Litecoin’s own developers have long stated that their intention is to create the “silver” to Bitcoin’s “gold.”
For this reason, Litecoin adopts many of the features of Bitcoin that Lee and other developers felt were working well for the earlier cryptocurrency, and changes some other aspects that the development team felt could be improved.
1. Proof of Work
One important similarity between Bitcoin and Litecoin is that they are both proof of work ecosystems. That means the underlying process by which both cryptocurrencies are mined—that is, generated, authenticated, and then added to a public ledger, or blockchain—is fundamentally similar.
2. Storage and Transactions
For an investor, many of the basic elements of transacting with Bitcoin and Litecoin are very similar as well. Both of these cryptocurrencies can be bought via exchange or mined using a mining rig. Both require a digital or cold storage "wallet" in order to be safely stored between transactions.
Furthermore, the prices of both cryptocurrencies have over time proven to be subject to dramatic volatility, depending upon factors ranging from investor interest to government regulations.
Differences Between Bitcoin and Litecoin:
1. Market Capitalization
One area in which Bitcoin and Litecoin differ significantly is in their market capitalization, the total dollar market value of all the outstanding coins.
As of March 2021, the total value of all bitcoins in circulation is around $1 trillion, making its market cap more than 70 times larger than Litecoin, which has a total value of $13.7 billion. Whether Bitcoin's market cap strikes you as either high or low depends largely on a historical perspective. When we consider that Bitcoin’s market capitalization was barely $42,000 in July 2010, its current figure seems staggering.
Bitcoin as a network still dwarfs all other digital currencies. Its closest competitor is Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, which has a market cap of nearly $212 billion. Thus, the fact that Bitcoin enjoys a significantly higher value than Litecoin is in itself not a surprise, given that Bitcoin is so much larger than all other digital currencies in existence at this time.
2. Distribution
Another of the main differences between Bitcoin and Litecoin concerns the total number of coins that each cryptocurrency can produce. This is where Litecoin distinguishes itself. The Bitcoin network can never exceed 21 million coins, whereas Litecoin can accommodate up to 84 million coins.
In theory, this sounds like a significant advantage for Litecoin, but its real-world effects may ultimately prove to be negligible. This is because both Bitcoin and Litecoin are divisible into nearly infinitesimal amounts. In fact, the minimum quantity of transferable Bitcoin is one hundred millionth of a bitcoin (0.00000001 bitcoins) known colloquially as one “satoshi.”
Users of either currency should, therefore, have no difficulty purchasing low-priced goods or services, regardless of how high the general price of an undivided single Bitcoin or Litecoin may become.
Litecoin’s greater number of maximum coins might offer a psychological advantage over Bitcoin, due to the lower price for a single unit.
In November 2013, IBM executive Richard Brown raised the prospect that some users may prefer transacting in whole units rather than in fractions of a unit, a potential advantage for Litecoin. Yet even assuming this is true, the problem may be solved through simple software changes introduced in the digital wallets through which Bitcoin transactions are made.
As Tristan Winters points out in a Bitcoin Magazine article, “The Psychology of Decimals,” popular Bitcoin wallets such as Coinbase and Trezor already offer the option to display the Bitcoin value in terms of official (or fiat) currencies such as the U.S. dollar. This can help circumvent the psychological aversion to dealing in fractions.
3. Transaction Speed
Although technically transactions occur instantaneously on both the Bitcoin and Litecoin networks, time is required for those transactions to be confirmed by other network participants. Litecoin was founded with the goal of prioritizing transaction speed, and that has proven an advantage as it has grown in popularity.
According to data from Blockchain.com, the Bitcoin network’s average transaction confirmation time (the time it takes for a block to be verified and added to the blockchain) is currently just under nine minutes per transaction, though this can vary widely when traffic is high. The equivalent figure for Litecoin is roughly 2.5 minutes.
In principle, this difference in confirmation time could make Litecoin more attractive for merchants. For example, a merchant selling a product in exchange for Bitcoin would need to wait nearly four times as long to confirm the payment as if that same product were sold in exchange for Litecoin. On the other hand, merchants can always opt to accept transactions without waiting for any confirmation at all. The security of such zero-confirmation transactions is the subject of some debate.
4. Algorithms
By far the most fundamental technical difference between Bitcoin and Litecoin are the different cryptographic algorithms that they employ. Bitcoin makes use of the longstanding SHA-256 algorithm, whereas Litecoin makes use of a comparatively new algorithm known as Scrypt.
The main practical significance of these different algorithms is their impact on the process of mining new coins. In both Bitcoin and Litecoin, the process of confirming transactions requires substantial computing power. Some members of the currency network, known as miners, allocate their computing resources toward confirming the transactions of other users. In exchange for doing so, these miners are rewarded by earning units of the currency which they have mined.
SHA-256 is generally considered to be a more complex algorithm than Scrypt, while at the same time allowing a greater degree of parallel processing. Consequently, Bitcoin miners in recent years have utilized increasingly sophisticated methods for mining bitcoins as efficiently as possible. The most common method for Bitcoin mining consists of the use of Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs).
These are hardware systems that, unlike the simple CPUs and GPUs which came before them, can be tailor-made for mining Bitcoins. The practical consequence of this has been that Bitcoin mining has become increasingly out-of-reach for the everyday user unless that individual joins a mining pool.
Scrypt, by contrast, was designed to be less susceptible to the kinds of custom hardware solutions employed in ASIC-based mining. This has led many commentators to view Scrypt-based cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin as being more accessible for users who also wish to participate in the network as miners. While some companies have brought Scrypt ASICs to the market, Litecoin’s vision of more easily accessible mining is still a reality, as a good portion of Litecoin mining is still done via miners' CPUs or GPUs.
Can Litecoin Overtake Bitcoin?
Whether Litecoin could ever overtake Bitcoin as the number one cryptocurrency is a matter of speculation. Bitcoin remains the original digital money, and to many, its name is synonymous with cryptocurrency in general— practically a generic term, like Kleenex is to facial tissue.
If any other crypto were to knock Bitcoin off the throne, Ethereum (the current number two), or one of the other higher-ranked currencies might be more likely candidates. Still, some analysts like Litecoin's fundamentals. "Litecoin can process transactions quicker than bitcoin, and its quicker block time suggests that it can handle more capacity than bitcoin," stock-picker Sean Williams wrote in a 2018 article for The Motley Fool, adding "it most definitely has the tools to push aside bitcoin and become the go-to medium of exchange for digital currency users."
While Bitcoin and Litecoin may, relatively speaking, be the gold and silver of the cryptocurrency space today, history has shown that the status quo in this fast-moving and still-developing sector can change in even a few months. It remains to be seen whether the cryptocurrencies with which we have become familiar will retain their stature in the months and years to come.
Summary
Litecoin is a cryptocurrency launched in late 2011 by former Google and Coinbase engineer Charlie Lee. To create Litecoin, Lee copied the Bitcoin codebase, increased the total supply, and changed the speed at which new blocks are added to the blockchain. Only approximately 84 million litecoins will ever be created, quadruple the total bitcoin supply. Litecoin also creates new blocks every 2.5 minutes, four times faster than Bitcoin. The Litecoin investor and developer communities view the protocol as a complementary pseudo-testnet for Bitcoin and a “digital silver” to Bitcoin’s “digital gold”. The Litecoin foundation stewards the Litecoin project and finances Litecoin Core development.
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