What Is Litecoin?
Litecoin was introduced by Charlie Lee in 2011 and it has become one of the top and consistent cryptocurrencies ever since. The coin, which is hardfork of bitcoin, functions as a peer to peer medium for transactions as it allows users to make seamless and cheap transactions.
As at the time of writing, Litecoin LTC is selling for $53.37 and has a market cap of $3,133,053,058.
In addition, there are 58,704,602 LTC presently in circulation and the maximum supply is 84,000,000 LTC. In December 2017, the price of Litecoin LTC reached its all-time high when it sold for $360.
This was a major milestone as the coin recorded a 7,291 percent surge in price in just a year. Even, bitcoin which was priced $20,000 in December increased by 1,731 percent. However, Litecoin’s price has stumbled along with the rest of the market in 2018 and its price has fallen by 85.1 percent in this year alone.
Why Can Litecoin Be Great?
The bearish run of Litecoin has seen it drop from the 4th to 7th on coinmarketcap’s top cryptocurrencies list. However, it is still possible for the coin to recover and bounce back to claim its place at the top of the crypto market.
This is because there are signs that indicate that Litecoin is strategically positioned to benefit from the crypto market’s next bull run. What are these signs?
Coinbase Custodial Service
Coinbase is generally known as the major gateway into the crypto market for new entrants. This is because the platform is user-friendly. However, Coinbase offers its users access to 5 cryptocurrencies which are Bitcoin, Litecoin, ethereum, ethereum classic, and bitcoin cash.
In addition, Coinbase is planning on offering custodial services to institutional investors. This development will likely attract institutional investors that are eager to adopt crypto to the platform.
And when this happens, Litecoin will be part of the coins available to them, as such, it is safe to say that the price of Litecoin will benefit from this. In addition, more exchanges are planning on listing Litecoin, which is a good thing.
Litecoin To Resolve Scalability Issues
One of the major limitations of cryptocurrencies is the scalability issues that result in congestions. Scalability is the capacity of a network to accommodate and process more transactions.
At the moment, many cryptocurrencies suffer from congestion and this must be resolved if crypto is going to be the major way to perform transactions in the future. As such, development teams are constantly searching for ways to resolve scalability issues and Litecoin is one of the platform making headway.
The platform has introduced mechanisms like Segregated Witnesses (SegWit) and lightning network. The team behind Litecoin is dedicated to resolving the network’s scalability, as it is one of the major factors that will fast-track a coins adoption.
What Is The Best Time To Get Into Litecoin?
I mentioned earlier that choosing the right crypto to invest in is tricky; however, choosing the right time to invest in a coin is even harder. You wouldn’t want to be sidelined when the buzz has kicked off, which means that your profit will likely be insignificant.
The crypto market has been on a bearish run since the beginning of this 2018, however, recent reports and development are indicating that the market will recover in the near future.
The crypto community is certain that the adoption of crypto by institutional investors will be vital to the market’s surge. And developments like the emergence of A-list custodial services, the emergence of Bakkt.
The possibility of a crypto ETF and the innovative solutions introduced to solve scalability issues are indications that the crypto market is on the verge of a major turnaround.
As such, the right strategy to employ is to buy Litecoin when its price is low. As such, the best time to invest in Litecoin is now.
Litecoin Versus Bitcoin
Litecoin is generally called the “baby brother of bitcoin”. Charlie Lee created a silver version of bitcoin’s gold status. As such, Litecoin focused majorly on improving the transaction functionalities of bitcoin instead of its store of value functionality. Some of the features of Litecoin that is an improvement on bitcoin’s functionalities are as followed:
Litecoin Has A Faster Transaction Processing Speed
Litecoin has a transaction processing time of 2.5 minutes while it takes an average of 10 minutes for transactions to be confirmed on the bitcoin network. This means that Litecoin is 4 times faster than bitcoin. As such Litecoin is more suitable for merchants or retailers.
Litecoin Uses The Scrypt Algorithm
Both Litecoin and bitcoin uses the proof-of-work verification mechanism. However, Litecoin uses the Scrypt algorithm while bitcoin utilizes the SHA-256 cryptographic algorithm.
As such, it is easier to mine Litecoin than bitcoin since the Scrypt algorithm makes it easy for miners to use GPU and CPU to mine.
This promotes the decentralized nature of the network as mining is not restricted to individuals and corporations who can access sophisticated mining devices. However, some firms have recently introduced Scrypt ASICs.
Litecoin Is Not Susceptible To Flood Attacks
Flood attack is a way of congesting a network by flooding it with microtransactions. Bitcoin is susceptible to this and its network was flooded in 2015. Interestingly, the attacker was only charged one flat fee for all the transactions.
To prevent this, Litecoin updated its network to charge a transaction fee on every transaction. As such, it will be costly to attempt to flood the Litecoin network.
Litecoin Has The Atomic Swap Functionality
Litecoin also has the atomic swap feature that allows its users to bypass crypto exchanges and directly swap bitcoin to Litecoin. As such, users can easily swap between bitcoin and Litecoin without incurring exchanges’ transaction fees.
Should You Buy Litecoin?
Litecoin has been around since 2011, as such it is an established cryptocurrency. the coin’s consistency coupled with the fact that its development team is committed to making the coin a global phenomenon are some of the reasons why you should buy Litecoin.
However, you should access quality Litecoin price analysis before allocating your funds to the coin. You can access this on Verified Crypto Traders’ telegram channel which offers its users quality live trading signals. Sign up and start your journey with Litecoin.
0 comments
Add a comment