Litecoin (LTC)

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You can deposit or withdraw LTC from Bitso using the Litecoin network exclusively. Make sure you choose this network when transferring your coins.

 

What is Litecoin?

Litecoin is one of the oldest surviving cryptocurrencies. Frequently called the “silver to Bitcoin’s gold”, Litecoin emerged in Oct. 2011. It was created by Charlie Lee, an early Bitcoin miner, computer scientist, and ex-Google software engineer. Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin, meaning its code is largely based on Bitcoin. However, it changed some key features to try to improve upon Bitcoin such as using a different hashing algorithm, raising the token supply cap, and reducing block transaction times. To this day Litecoin continues to be the second most popular “pure” cryptocurrency, behind Bitcoin.

 

What makes it unique?

  • Aimed to be a “lite” version of Bitcoin;

  • Proof-Of-Work consensus;

  • Launched in 2011, one of the oldest surviving cryptocurrencies;

  • Higher supply cap, lower transaction times, and smaller fees aimed to make it a more scalable version of Bitcoin, focusing mostly on microtransactions;

  • The second most popular “pure” cryptocurrency, it's a crypto whose value is derived solely from its own protocol and functionality;

  • Uses Scrypt hashing algorithm, intended to improve speed against earlier hashing algorithms like SHA-256 on which Bitcoin runs;

  • One of the most widely accepted cryptocurrencies, with 2,000 merchants accepting it across the globe.

 

Purpose

Litecoin attempts to solve some of Bitcoin’s scaling issues by focusing on making transactions faster and cheaper. To do this Litecoin uses a newer hashing algorithm called Scrypt which serves the double purpose of consuming less energy while being faster to solve. Mining with Scrypt is about four times faster than mining Bitcoin. The goal of using this hashing algorithm was to allow people to mine Litecoin from their laptops and PCs while lowering the fees incurred in transactions and making block processing times much faster. Thus, Litecoin’s use case was making mining easier for regular people while enabling a faster and cheaper service for micropayments (like paying for goods and services such as buying a coffee or getting groceries).

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