Litecoin is one of the new electronic systems for making payments and money transfers, at the same time being a type of cryptocurrency. It was created by programmer Charles Lee in 2011 as a fork and alternative to Bitcoins. Today it takes the second place in terms of prevalence and demand from all known cryptocurrencies.
The payment system Litecoin is created on the principle of a peer-to-peer distributed network. It does not have a single center of administration, therefore it does not depend on political influence, pressure from regulators, and cannot be subjected to compulsory regulation of the exchange rate. In order to become the owner of Litecoin e-currency, it is enough to get a Litecoin address and register a Litecoin wallet. This procedure does not require personification and provides users with confidentiality of operations. A Litecoin address always starts with an “L” and includes 33 characters.
Lightcoins are a full-fledged currency that allows you to carry out various transactions, transfers, payment for services, and also use it as a tool for trading on exchange platforms.
The exchange rate of this currency is regulated by the balance between the number of offers and demand, which makes it sufficiently volatile and attractive for earning at the rate jumps. In most cases, exchanges trade a pair of LTC / BTC, however, other instruments, for example, LTC / USD, are increasingly found. The ability to instantly convert Litecoin into any other currency allows you to actively use it to purchase various goods and pay for services.
The ever-growing rate of Litecoins makes them an attractive and highly profitable investment.
All information in the system is protected by cryptographic methods.
All transactions with this currency are conducted without the participation of intermediaries. Information about transactions is freely available, personal data of subscribers is not indicated.
You can withdraw Lightcoins through trading exchanges, exchange offices (for example, baksmany.com) or using an electronic wallet.
The issue of Litecoins occurs according to a certain algorithm. The process of random block generation takes place on average in two and a half minutes, which is four times higher than the Bitcoin generation speed. Transaction completion occurs after the generation of six blocks. About Litecoin, it is known that the maximum possible number of them put into circulation will be limited to 84 million. For comparison, the issue of Bitcoins will be 21 million. Around 2020, ¾ of all Lightcoins will be generated.
The process of "creating" Lightcoins is similar to mining Bitcoins. To generate currency, you need to install a special miner program and register on the pool. You can, of course, mine the currency yourself, however, the chances of success in this case are negligible. In order to increase the performance of computing power, users are united in pools. After creating a new block, the reward is distributed among all members of the pool.
It is worth doing mining, as between the representatives of the network an exchange of algorithms begins, which leads to the generation of information blocks about committed transactions. The initial reward for the created block was 50 LTC. Every 840 thousand blocks, this amount becomes half as much. Such a change occurs approximately once every four years. The amount of remuneration received depends on the power of computing equipment.
Each Litecoin has its own unique key, which is then added to digital money along with public keys during transactions. All transactions are privately recorded on the network after verification, which helps to avoid double deduction of currency.
Despite the fact that Litecoins were created based on the Bitcoin program code, they have a number of advantages over them, which determine the relevance of this cryptocurrency.
The computational algorithm uses RAM more intensively, which makes it possible to use the CPU more efficiently.
Speaking about Litecoin, it should be noted the high speed of their generation, 4 times higher than the speed of "creation" of Bitcoins. This allows you to process a significantly larger volume of transactions, which makes it possible to increase the accuracy of profit forecasts, but, at the same time, requires more memory to store information.
Difficulty is recalculated every 2016 blocks, which is approximately 3.5 days. In the event of a sharp change in the number of users associated with weekends or holidays, problems are possible due to the complexity of the calculations.
The size of the issue of Litecoins is four times higher than the possible number of Bitcoins.
The electronic currency Litecoin has a more reliable encryption algorithm than Bitcoins and other similar ones. The popularity of Bitcoins causes increased interest in it by cyber fraudsters who are trying to crack the system. The low cost of Litecoins provides them with a significantly lower number of hacker attacks. For this reason, many users, choosing between Bitcoins and Lightcoins, prefer the latter.
The indicated advantages of Litecoins make them a very popular currency, which successfully competes with its progenitor. Last fall, one Litecoin cost about $ 3 and was considered the fourth currency in terms of capitalization.
Speaking about Litecoin, it should be noted the disadvantages of this fork of Bitcoins:
If the electronic wallet is hacked or stolen, then all the funds stored on it will be irretrievably lost.
Sharp fluctuations in the cryptocurrency exchange rate increase financial risks.
Confidentiality of operations attracts dishonest people.
The great popularity of cryptocurrency leads to its low turnover.
It is obvious that Litecoins are a very promising currency, which in the future will be able to supplant Bitcoins and gain immense popularity among Internet users. We hope that the above information about the electronic currency Litecoin will help users make a choice in its favor among a large number of types of cryptocurrencies.