What is Litecoin?

Litecoin ( symbol : Ł ; abrev : LTC ) is a crypto - softwaresupported by a peer-to-peer network and a free softwareproject released under the MIT license . ^[1] Inspired and almost technically similar to Bitcoin ( BTC ). ^[2] The creation and litecoin transfer is based on a protocol encryption of open source and is not managed by a central authority. ^[3] Litecoin developers want to try to improve Bitcoin ^[4] and offer three fundamental differences. ^[5] [6]

First, the Litecoin network processes one block every 2.5 minutes, instead of every 10 minutes as is the case for bitcoin.

Second, the Litecoin network will produce 84 million litecoins, which represents four times more units than the Bitcoin network .

Finally, Litecoin uses the scrypt function in its proof-of-work algorithm: a sequential hard-memory function that was initially thought by Colin Percival. ^[7] This function aims to prevent GPU , FPGA, and ASIC mining from having a significant advantage over CPU mining , although GPUmining is currently 10 times more efficient than CPUmining . Each litecoin is subdivisible into 100,000,000 smaller units, defined by eight decimal places.

Index

Transactions Edit

Transactions, balances, and emissions are managed by a peer-to-peer network very similar to that of Bitcoin through scrypt and its workflow scheme (Litecoins are issued when a sufficiently small hash value is found , at which point it is created a block, the process of creating the blocks is called mining). ^[8] [9] The emission rate forms a geometric series , and this rate is divided into two every 4 years (each 840,000 blocks) reaching a total of 84 million LTC. The intensive nature of scrypt memory means that Litecoin is more suitable than Bitcoin for GPU mining . FPGA implementationsand ASIC are more costly to create scrypt than for SHA 1 as used by Bitcoin . ^[10]

At present Litecoins are marketed to both fiduciary and bitcoins, usually in online transactions. Reversible transactions (as well as credit card transactions ) are not normally used to buy Litecoins because transactions with Litecoin are irreversible, so there is a danger of reversal . ^[11] [12] As of April 28, 2013, 1 LTC is worth approximately 4.11 USD or 0.032 BTC. ^[12] [13] This makes Litecoin the second largest crypto - currency by market capitalizationwith a limit of $ 70,000,000 . ^{[14][15] [16]}

History Edit

Litecoin was released through an open - source client in Github on October 7, 2011. It was a confluence of the Bitcoin-Qt client, differing only by having a modified block generation time, a diverse hashing algorithm , and a slightly changed GUI . ^[17] The current version of this client (as of April 19, 2013) is v0.6.3c. ^[18]

Alternative customers were launched, including umo official Android , ^[19] as well as an official customer Electrum. ^[20]

Bitcoin's largest stock exchange, Mt.Gox, announced on 25 April 2013 that Litecoin's commercialization was delayed due to DDoS attacks on its website. ^[21]

Litecoin was recently announced in the news as an alternative to Bitcoin . ^[22]

Development Edit

The developers of Litecoin have a new release in process, version 0.8.1, which will help in modernizing and improving the network. This important update will include all the improvements made in the recent release of Bitcoin 0.8.1 .