Litecoin is a decentralised online currency created in october 2011. It is a Fork of bitcoin(technically inspired in many regards to bitcoin). If bitcoin is considered as gold in cryptocurrency market then litecoin will be silver. Litecoin is faster and cheaper(transaction cost) than bitcoin and mostly focused on small transaction. Total coins available to be mined are 84 millions.
Why should one choose litecoins over other cryptocurrency?
Litecoins have technical advantages over bitcoin and other major cryptocurrency they are:-
Segregated Witness(SIGWIT):- It is a scaling solution.It can also reduce transaction cost.
Lightning Network:- It is a peer tp peer network that builds upon another network (like bitcoin or litecoin) with segwit to provide a mesh network of bidirectional payment channel and allow participants to transfer money to each other without having to make all their transactions public on the blockchain.
Why should one buy litecoins?
Litecoin is around since beginning.
Coinbase has added litecoin thus increase in acquisition.
Cheap transaction fees (fraction of bitcoin) than bitcoin.
Litecoin has strong community support.
Things to know about litecoin:-
Litecoin was develobed by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee.
Litecoin has decreased block generation time i.e 2.5 minutes (bitcoin has 10 minutes).
It uses scrypt in its proof of work algorithm. (Bitcoin uses SHA-256)
Scrypt algorithm was chosen so as to allow miners mine both Bitcoin and Litecoin at the same time.
Scrypt algorithm was chosen to avoid giving advantage to video card (GPU), FPGA and ASIC miners over CPU miners.
Threat to Litecoin:-
If bitcoin goes sigwit, Bitcoin may offer same features as litecoin.
