Litecoin $LTC #Litecoin the fourteenth largest cryptocurrency and it is a peer-to-peer digital currency. It is an open-source software project released under the MIT/X11 license, which means it imposes very few restrictions on reuse. Litecoin is similar in many ways to Bitcoin, as it is also considered a digital currency and a digital payment system.

Additionally, Litecoin was originally created to improve many of the noticeable shortcomings of Bitcoin, such as slow transaction processing speeds and mining monopolies. Litecoin (LTC) was designed for everyday transactions, while Bitcoin has evolved to become more than just a 'store of value.'

What is Litecoin (LTC)

Litecoin (LTC) is an alternative cryptocurrency created in October 2011 by Charlie Lee, a former engineer at Google. Litecoin was adapted from the Bitcoin open-source code but with many modifications. Like Bitcoin, Litecoin relies on a global open-source payment network that is not controlled by any central authority.

Litecoin differs from Bitcoin in aspects such as faster block creation rate and the use of Scrypt (pronounced es-scrypt) as a proof-of-work scheme.

History of Litecoin

Litecoin was created by former Google engineer Charlie Lee and was one of the first 'alternative currencies', which is the term used for cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin (and sometimes Ethereum).

Jay Blaskey, a cryptocurrency specialist at BitIRA, says, "Litecoin is the second oldest cryptocurrency, having forked from the Bitcoin protocol in 2011." "It was designed for fast, secure, and low-cost payment transactions.

The goal of launching Litecoin was to improve Bitcoin in several different ways. For example, Lee developed a new hashing algorithm for Litecoin called Scrypt (pronounced S-crypt) that supports the simpler algorithm for higher Litecoin transaction speeds. Bitcoin has a slow transaction processing speed of about five transactions per second, and creating new blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain can take around 10 minutes.

This slow transaction speed frustrates merchants who want to accept Bitcoin as a payment method. You can wait up to an hour, on average, to get the six confirmations required for a Bitcoin transaction. Imagine buying something online using a credit card and staying on a 'processing your transaction' screen for a full hour.

On the other hand, the transaction processing speed in Litecoin is 54 per second, and new blocks can be created on the Litecoin blockchain approximately every 2.5 minutes. While Litecoin still requires at least six confirmations from most exchanges to be considered irreversible, peer-to-peer (P2P) payment networks can often settle Litecoin transactions almost instantly.

The goal of improving transaction speed was to prove to merchants that they no longer had to feel frustrated by the long settlement times of Bitcoin; instead, they could accept Litecoin and settle payments faster, thus conducting business more quickly and at speeds more comparable to other digital payment methods.

How Litecoin Works

Litecoin is an online network that people can use to send payments from one person to another. Litecoin is a peer-to-peer system and is decentralized, meaning it is not controlled by any entity or government.