Litecoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open source software project. Creation and transfer of coins is based on an open source cryptographic protocol and is not managed by any central authority. The coin was inspired by, and in technical details is nearly identical to, Bitcoin. Litecoin, by their own admission, is a clone of Bitcoin.
While Bitcoin was seen as “gold” and a store of value for long-term purposes, Litecoin was seen as the “silver” and a means of a transaction for cheaper and everyday purposes. So, on October 7 2011, litecoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub. The Litecoin Network went live on October 13 2011. It is basically a fork of the Bitcoin Core client.
Litecoin is different in some ways from Bitcoin.
The Litecoin Network aims to process a block every 2.5 minutes, rather than Bitcoin’s 10 minutes. The developers claim that this allows Litecoin to have faster transaction confirmation.
Litecoin uses scrypt in its proof-of-work algorithm, a sequential memory-hard function requiring asymptotically more memory than an algorithm which is not memory-hard.
Due to Litecoin’s use of the scrypt algorithm, FPGA and ASIC devices made for mining Litecoin are more complicated to create and more expensive to produce than they are for Bitcoin, which uses SHA-256.
One of the most fundamental and technical differences between the two is their mining procedure.
The miners use their computational power to solve extremely hard cryptographic puzzles. The puzzle solving needs to be extremely hard, if it is simple then miners will keep mining blocks and drain out the entire bitcoin supply.
However, while the puzzle solving part is difficult, checking to see if the solution of the puzzle is correct or not should be simple.
Average block mining speed in Litecoin is 2.5 mins when compared to bitcoin’s 10. While bitcoin has 21 million coins out in the open, litecoin has 84 million.
Here are some places you can buy Litecoin. Coinbase, Coinmama,
To store your litecoin you need a wallet, there are different wallet, here are some for you to decide on. Ledger, coinbase, KeepKey
