Litecoin Price Today

What Is Litecoin?

Litecoin is both an open-source blockchain and the native cryptocurrency (LTC) that operates on it as a peer-to-peer payment system. The Litecoin blockchain forked from the Bitcoin protocol in 2011 — two years after Bitcoin was introduced.

When Litecoin was launched, its developers had three goals in mind:

• Improve transaction processing speed
• Lower the cost of transaction fees
• Reduce the influence and central control of large-scale mining firms

Litecoin’s quick transaction speeds and relative ease to mine have made it a long-time competitor to Bitcoin, affectionately described by the cryptocurrency community as “the silver to Bitcoin’s gold.”

How Does Litecoin Work?

Litecoin is a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain, attempting to iterate on many concepts essential to its predecessor. However, a key difference is the emphasis Litecoin places on faster transaction times and lower fees, making it a popular payment option.

New blocks are generated roughly every 2.5 minutes on the Litecoin blockchain, as opposed to every 10 minutes for Bitcoin. Similarly, Litecoin has a supply cap of 84 million LTC (whereas Bitcoin has a cap of 21 million BTC).

Like other early blockchains such as Bitcoin, Litecoin uses a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism. However, instead of Bitcoin’s SHA-256 hashing algorithm, Litecoin uses Scrypt (pronounced es-crypt). The Scrypt hashing algorithm lessens the dominance of specialty (ASIC) computers in the mining process, making the mining process more accessible to a broader range of participants.

History of Litecoin

Charlie Lee created Litecoin to include faster block propagation speeds and an improved version of Scrypt (a mathematical function that garbles data and makes it unreadable).

After launching Litecoin in 2011, Lee temporarily put blockchain development on the backburner to focus on other endeavors.

In late 2017, Lee returned to developing LTC full-time and now serves as the managing director of the Litecoin Foundation — a non-profit dedicated to supporting the LTC cryptocurrency.

How To Buy Litecoin

Buying LTC, the native cryptocurrency of the Litecoin blockchain, starts with finding a crypto platform — like Binance.US — that allows you to purchase the digital asset.

It’s also important to consider variables other than the availability of LTC. A good platform will offer reasonable fees, tools, and resources to help you make decisions and access other popular cryptocurrencies on the market.

Once you’ve found the right platform, the next step in buying Litecoin is to create an account and fund it with fiat currency (e.g., U.S. dollars).

Depending on the platform, you can accomplish this through one of several methods, including:

• ACH from an existing bank account
• Debit card
• Bank or wire transfer
• Other established payment services, such as Apple Pay (check platform for details)

When the fiat currency reaches your account, you can use it to purchase LTC by choosing how much you want to buy and when you want to buy it.

Once you have the LTC, store it in a crypto wallet — either the cold version (an offline space like an external hard drive) or the hot version (an online space typically provided by the platform through which you made the purchase).

How To Sell Litecoin

On most platforms, selling Litecoin is just as easy as buying it. The process starts with creating and funding an account on an established crypto platform — like Binance.US — that allows for the buying and selling of your chosen asset.

Once you’ve created the account, you can either fund it with fiat currency and purchase LTC, or transfer LTC from another platform.

Once you hold LTC on the platform you can sell it in a few different ways, including via market order at the current market price, a limit order at a future price you indicate, or a stop-limit order (sometimes known as a stop-loss), where you can set a stop price to trigger the sale at market price.

When the sale is complete, the funds will be deposited into your account, and you can then use the money to buy other cryptocurrencies or pay for products and services.

How To Trade Litecoin

If you’ve bought or sold Litecoin, you can also trade it through much the same process.

Open or log into an account on a crypto platform, like Binance.US, that offers trading activities. Then, fund the account with fiat currency so you can buy LTC, or transfer LTC from another platform.

Once you have LTC in your account, you can start trading to build your portfolio.

But before doing that, it’s essential to research and analyze the market. Trading LTC, or any cryptocurrency for that matter, can get complicated sometimes, so prepare yourself by creating a strategy and sticking to it.

Consider using Binance.US for low fees and a large selection of cryptocurrencies (including LTC) to choose from.

Resources

Official Litecoin Website

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