Litecoin: Bitcoin’s Silver Brother

Most of people are well aware of the name of the most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. As a Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies are gaining in popularity too. Most of them have a very niche character and are expected to be unlikely to spectacularly succeed. Except for one.

This is a Litecoin, which as an alternative cryptocurrency today has earned itself the nickname of virtual silver. Litecoin (LTC) is the second most important digital currency. While bitcoin can be used to carry out large transactions, litecoin as a secure cryptocurrency is likely to become a convenient form of payment for micropayment.

Litecoin is a work of a former Google co-worker who, inspired by bitcoin, created his improved alternative. The core of this currency is based on the open source X11 license, which gives users unlimited access to copy, modify, distribute and use the program, provided that the licensing requirements are kept, and information about the author is retained.

Litecoin is based on a P2P network, so there isn’t any central bank or mint to distribute. It is called silver because the status of virtual gold has already Bitcoin.

They come up with a strictly defined quantity. Litecoin algorithm assumes that the network will generate 84 million digital LTC coins, which is four times more than the bitcoin target of 21 million.

The single virtual Litecoin coin is divided into 100 million smaller units.

The Litecoin network is supposed to process blocks at an average frequency of 2.5 minutes (compared to every 10 minutes for Bitcoin networks). That’s why Litecoin is a faster cryptocurrency than Bitcoin.