Litecoin nicknamed the bitcoin silver has its inception from a
fork of bitcoin. It emerged onto scene in 2011 as a remedy to
some of the flaws of bitcoin. LTC is considered as one of the
most underrated ‘alt coins’ present in the market today. The
main reason for it to be underrated is because investors usually
don’t understand the difference between bitcoin and litecoin.
The two coins bitcoin and litecoin are closely related, with
litecoin being heavily influenced by bitcoin. Both are
defamatory in nature.
LTC trading is an improvement to bitcoin with better block
generation efficiency. Litecoin has a block generation time of
2.5mins compared to the 10mins of bitcoin making litecoin
transaction faster compared to bitcoin.
The coin limit of litecoin is four times than that of bitcoin i.e. 84
million to 21 million of bitcoin. This means that when the
demand increases there will be larger supply of litecoin to meet
the demands, at least initially.
While both litecoin and bitcoin mining operates on proof of
work concept, but the algorithms of the two coins are different.
Litecoin mining algorithm is much simpler compared to bitcoin
which makes it minable on less powerful computers, which
would be significant in the later stages as mining difficulty will
keep on increasing.
All these key differences between litecoin and bitcoin would
make litecoin a better prospect compared to bitcoin in the larger
picture. Hence the initial statement that litecoin might be one of
the most underrated ‘alt coin’ in the business might seem to be
justified.
As things stand right now litecoin stands as the 6 th largest
cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization at
approximately 12 Billion dollars, with bitcoin’s market
capitalization at 217 Billion dollars. Nevertheless, performance
wise litecoin has outperformed both bitcoin and Ethereum in the
last year with value appreciation reaching 2000%.
Litecoin along with other cryptocurrencies are tethered to
bitcoin, meaning with larger people adopting bitcoin, adoption
rate of other coins will also increase. With better block
generation efficiency and faster transaction rate, the adoption
rate of litecoin is supposed to increase exponentially. On the
other hand, with both SegWit (Segregated Witness) and a
Lightning network activated, Litecoin has the potential to scale
far beyond anything Bitcoin is capable at the moment. SegWit
and lightning network technologies that enable cryptocurrency
transactions to speed up while maintaining low transaction costs.
Litecoin which is trading at around 300$ is expected to touch
1000$ by the end of 2018. Despite the optimistic outlook,
making any price predictions for litecoin is fraught with
uncertainty. According to Charli lee, the founder of Litecoin,
litecoin will be used for transactions whereas its big brother
Bitcoin will be used as a store of value.
The main deterring factor in the rise of litecoin will be how
government regulations will affect the cryptocurrencies in
general. The basic idea of cryptocurrencies is for it be
decentralized, but none of the cryptocurrencies including
litecoin is above government regulations. But the natural
question is how effective any of the government regulations will
be in the crypto space.
As to the million dollar question, where is litecoin heading in
2018, nobody really knows but with good research and educated
guesses we can conclude that there are reasons to keep litecoin
on the radar going forward.