What is Litecoin

Litecoin is a cryptocurrency. Which means Litecoin is a digital asset created to work as a means of trade that uses cryptography to secure the transactions, regulate the building of more units, and to authenticate the transfer of assets. Furthermore it is an open source software that was released under MIT/X11 licenseand apeer to peer cryptocurrency. This cryptocurrency was created by Charlie Lee, a former google employee on October 7th, 2011.

In November 2013, the value of Litecoin experienced a huge growth, a 100% increase in value within a day, 24hours. In that same month it reached 1 billion USD market capitalization, and as at November 2017, $4,600,081,733USD was its market capitalization.

Properties of Litecoin

Market Cap

Number of Coins


Market Cap

Litecoin is one of the top five cryptocurrencies in the world today, the ranks fluctuate because it is based on the number and price of coins in circulation.

Number of coins

Litecoin is of intrinsic value because of its limited supply. Once a specific amount of cryptocurrency is created there can be no more coins after that. There is a total of 84 million Litecoins.


Litecoin creates blocks up to 4 times faster than its highest competition Bitcoin. And it can confirm the legitimacy of a transaction, and process a higher number of them far quicker than Bitcoin in the same space of time.

Mining Litecoin

There is big difference between Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies is the hashing algorithm that is used to solve a block, and also used to know the amount of coins distributed when a solution is found. Litecoin uses a less complex, memory intensive algorithm known as Scrypt.

Computers are used to mine Litecoin, combining its CPU and GPU cycles to solve a very complex mathematical equation. It passes the data through the algorithm until the power of the computer discovers a solution. At this juncture all the operations within that specific block are completely verified and marked as legitimate.

The dividends of mining cryptocurrencies is quite large. A predetermined number of coins are shared to those who helped for every block solved – where the high powered hashers get the most share.

Due to its Scrypt algorithm, the computers made for mining Litecoin are more expensive, and complex to produce than they are for other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Golden coin with the Litecoin symbol in ‘electronic’ cyberspace. 3D rendered graphics.

How to Buy Litecoin

Litecoins can be bought using another cryptocurrency or actual currency like US dollar, on websites known as exchanges.


Litecoin Wallets

Essentially all cryptocurrencies are stored in a digital wallet. Generally there are different types of wallets. There is a complex means, rather outdated but still secure method to store Litecoin, is generating a paper wallet. This involves printing out a private key generated on a computer. There are also software wallets that can be on your mobile device, computer or physical hardware wallets. These wallets hold private keys that a used to send and receive Litecoins to and from your specific Litecoin address. Hardware wallets are somewhat more secure because they are not connected to the internet, keeping you away from internet hackers.


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