What Is Litecoin, and How Does It Work?
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
LINKEDIN
By GREG MCFARLANE
Updated Jun 25, 2019
There are 180 internationally recognized currencies in circulation, ranging from the Samoan tala to the Burmese kyat. Just like with regular currency, there are multiple cryptocurrencies too. Because it was the first, bitcoin gets all the publicity, but it competes against dozens of aspiring alternatives – one of which is litecoin.
Measured by market capitalization (or the amount of currency on the market), litecoin is the third-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin and XRP. Litecoin, like its contemporaries, functions in one sense as an online payment system. Like PayPal or a bank’s online network, users can use it to transfer currency to one another. But instead of using U.S. dollars, litecoin conducts transactions in units of litecoin. That is where litecoin’s similarity to most traditional currency and payment systems ends, though it's still one of the five most important virtual currencies other than bitcoin.
How Litecoin Is Made
Like all cryptocurrencies, litecoin is not issued by a government, which historically has been the only entity that society trusts to issue money. Instead, being regulated by a Federal Reserve and coming off a press at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, litecoins are created by the elaborate procedure called mining, which consists of processing a list of litecoin transactions. Unlike traditional currencies, the supply of litecoins is fixed. There will ultimately be only 84 million litecoins in circulation and not one more. Every 2.5 minutes (as opposed to 10 minutes for bitcoin), the litecoin network generates a what is called a block – a ledger entry of recent litecoin transactions throughout the world. And here is where litecoin’s inherent value derives.
The block is verified by mining software and made visible to any “miner” who wants to see it. Once a miner verifies it, the next block enters the chain, which is a record of every litecoin transaction ever made.
Mining for Litecoin
The incentive for mining is that the first miner to successfully verify a block is rewarded with 50 litecoins. The number of litecoins awarded for such a task reduces with time. In October 2015, it was halved, and the halving will continue at regular intervals until the 84,000,000th litecoin is mined.
But could one unscrupulous miner change the block, enabling the same litecoins to be spent twice? No. The scam would be detected immediately by some other miner, anonymous to the first. The only way to truly game the system would be to get a majority of miners to agree to process the false transaction, which is practically impossible.
Mining cryptocurrency at a rate worthwhile to the miners requires ungodly processing power, courtesy of specialized hardware. To mine most cryptocurrencies, the central processing unit in your Dell Inspiron isn’t anywhere near fast enough to complete the task. Which brings us to another point of differentiation for litecoins; they can be mined with ordinary off-the-shelf computers more so than other cryptocurrencies can. Although the greater a machine’s capacity for mining, the better the chance it’ll earn something of value for a miner.
What Is Litecoin Worth?
Any currency – even the U.S. dollar or gold bullion – is only as valuable as society thinks it is. If the Federal Reserve started circulating too many banknotes, the value of the dollar would plummet in short order. This phenomenon transcends currency. Any good or service becomes less valuable the more readily and cheaply available it is. The creators of litecoin understood from the start that it would be difficult for a new currency to develop a reputation in the marketplace. But by restricting the number of litecoins in circulation, the founders could at least allay people’s fears of overproduction.
There are advantages inherent to litecoin over bitcoin. Litecoin can handle more transactions, given the shorter block generation time. Litecoin also has a barely perceptible transaction fee. It costs 1/1000 of a litecoin to process a transaction, regardless of its size. Contrast that with PayPal’s 3% fee.
In the physical world, the most reliable stores of value become the currencies of choice in event of a crisis. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Zimbabwe became synonymous with hyperinflation. When inflation reached 89.7 *****tillion percent (give or take a few points) and rendered the Zimbabwean dollar worthless, that wiped out the fortunes of many people unfortunate enough to have held liquid assets. People had no choice but to use something more stable – primarily the U.S. dollar and South African rand – for daily commerce. Litecoin’s inherent scarcity makes hyperinflation impossible, but there’s still the challenge of garnering general acceptance and getting more people to use the currency.
The Bottom Line
Once a currency reaches a critical mass of users who are confident that the currency is indeed what it represents and probably won’t lose its value, it can sustain itself as a method of payment. Litecoin isn’t anywhere near universally accepted, as even its own founders admit that it has fewer than 100,000 users (even bitcoin probably has less than half a million total users). But as cryptocurrencies become more readily accepted and their values stabilize, one or two of them – possibly including litecoin – will emerge as the standard currencies of the digital realm.
tera bitcoin ethereum testnet оплатить bitcoin bitcoin agario bitcoin forbes bitcoin уязвимости майнить monero bitcoin анонимность konvert bitcoin abi ethereum bitcoin 2018 обновление ethereum bitcoin machines bitcoin cap ютуб bitcoin продам bitcoin hashrate ethereum Because cryptocurrencies operate independently and in a decentralized manner, without a bank or a central authority, new units can be added only after certain conditions are met. For example, with Bitcoin, only after a block has been added to the blockchain will the miner be rewarded with bitcoins, and this is the only way new bitcoins can be generated. The limit for bitcoins is 21 million; after this, no more bitcoins will be produced.ethereum платформа
взлом bitcoin
bitcoin word
кошелек ethereum bitcoin 4000 bitcoin blender ethereum ann токен bitcoin local bitcoin bitcoin vpn ccminer monero php bitcoin Recent Cypherpunk Innovationsethereum падение client bitcoin bitcoin кранов статистика ethereum bitcoin clouding
opencart bitcoin 16 bitcoin british bitcoin boom bitcoin bitcoin visa настройка monero bitcoin service bitcoin fasttech masternode bitcoin calculator ethereum bitcoin сеть bitcoin адреса bitcoin eth ethereum dao ethereum russia майнить bitcoin bitcoin сервера bitcoin airbit habrahabr bitcoin
wallet cryptocurrency бумажник bitcoin bitcoin коды bitcoin динамика bitcoin email flash bitcoin ru bitcoin bitcoin vizit bitcoin 0 bitcoin investing bitcoin cudaminer
bitcoin 4096 I’ve told you about how the first cryptocurrency was created and how it works. I’ve also told you about how cryptocurrency is stored and used. Now, let’s look at some other cryptocurrencies that have been created since Bitcoin…mmgp bitcoin ферма ethereum
bitcoin ledger technology adopted by the mainstream.монеты bitcoin Governments could not successfully ban the consumption of alcohol, the use of drugs, the purchase of firearms, or the ownership of gold. A government can marginally restrict access, or even make possession illegal, but it cannot make something of value demanded by a broad and disparate group of people magically go away. When the U.S. made the private ownership of gold illegal in 1933, gold did not lose its value or disappear as a monetary medium. It actually increased in value relative to the dollar, and just thirty years later, the ban was lifted. Not only does bitcoin provide a greater value proposition relative to any other good that any government has ever attempted to ban (including gold); but by its nature, it is also far harder to ban. Bitcoin is global and decentralized. It is without borders and it is secured by nodes and cryptographic keys. The act of banning bitcoin would require preventing open source software code from being run and preventing digital signatures (created by cryptographic keys) from being broadcast on the internet. And it would have to be coordinated across numerous jurisdictions, except there is no way to know where the keys actually reside or to prevent more nodes from popping up in different jurisdictions. Setting aside the constitutional issues, it would be technically infeasible to enforce a ban of bitcoin in any meaningful way.bitcoin login If you have the output of a cryptographic hash function (called a hash for short), there’s no way of knowing what the input was. It’s a one-way street. And that’s what makes it cryptographic—you can use a hash function to scramble text in a way that’s impossible to unscramble.bitcoin p2p эфир bitcoin lurkmore bitcoin ethereum stratum bitcoin qr new bitcoin bitcoin china swiss bitcoin получение bitcoin bitcoin перспективы
6000 bitcoin bear bitcoin bitcoin котировка bitcoin hosting bitcoin buy транзакции ethereum 2016 bitcoin konverter bitcoin
polkadot ico bitcoin удвоитель новый bitcoin dark bitcoin андроид bitcoin bitcoin local ethereum транзакции donate bitcoin erc20 ethereum ethereum com добыча ethereum bitcoin зебра bitcoin подтверждение ru bitcoin bitcoin генератор bitcoin habr bitcoin eth bitcoin prominer ico cryptocurrency
weekend bitcoin monero bitcointalk bitcoin ecdsa bitcoin knots доходность ethereum bitcoin 2048 monster bitcoin bitcoin people обменники bitcoin bitcoin bitrix bitcoin ann обменник bitcoin зарабатывать bitcoin что bitcoin ninjatrader bitcoin zona bitcoin покер bitcoin bitcoin онлайн ротатор bitcoin bitcoin eu ethereum заработок bitcoin зебра пул monero bitcoin investing ubuntu bitcoin
bitcoin заработать chart bitcoin ethereum course форк ethereum бот bitcoin bitcoin приложения bitcoin bcc программа ethereum bitcoin x2 ethereum coin ethereum проекты As far as mediums of exchange go, Bitcoin is actually quite economical of resources, compared to others.bitcoin click tether верификация film bitcoin игры bitcoin bitcoin лучшие
pps bitcoin bitcoin продажа spots cryptocurrency криптовалюта bitcoin ethereum обозначение bitcoin ротатор
bitcoin покупка Progress is accelerating on more advanced solutions such as lightning, with transactions being sent on testnets (as well as some using real bitcoin). And the potential of Schnorr signatures is attracting increasing attention, with several proposals working on detailing functionality and integration.a single root node, also formed from the hash of its two ***** node, representing the top of the treeзаработать monero
Altcoins, or digital currency alternatives to bitcoin, tend to see lower levels of acceptance among major companies. Litecoin (LTC), one of the earliest altcoins to be developed and launched after bitcoin, for instance, is accepted by dozens of businesses, per the Litecoin Foundation.2 However, a glance through this list reveals that few of these businesses are major international corporations and that most of the entrants on the list are cryptocurrency exchanges and specialized online stores. This is fairly representative of many other altcoins as well.ethereum обменники Users can lose bitcoin and other cryptocurrency tokens as a result of theft, computer failure, loss of access keys, and more.ethereum обозначение bitcoin valet bitcoin greenaddress майнеры monero tether android cryptocurrency tech bitcoin calc bitcoin крах habrahabr bitcoin
ethereum microsoft
bitcoin официальный coinmarketcap bitcoin rpc bitcoin bitcoin анимация zcash bitcoin форекс bitcoin bitcoin quotes bitcoin список ethereum gas bitcoin com ethereum wallet
bitcoin магазин bitcoin abc ad bitcoin
chvrches tether bitcoin euro bitcoin википедия bitcoin заработок ethereum erc20 ethereum com torrent bitcoin
cran bitcoin адрес ethereum
bitcoin 1070 invest bitcoin покер bitcoin символ bitcoin half bitcoin
bitcoin monkey будущее ethereum monero algorithm payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through abitfenix bitcoin bitcoin forex How Much Is Bitcoin Worth?bitcoin mastercard cryptocurrency arbitrage car bitcoin Page count – all white papers must have two versions. A regular whitepaper (20-100 pages) and a lite paper (around 2-8 pages). A late paper is just a shorter version of the whitepaper — it highlights all the key information.rocket bitcoin roboforex bitcoin lite bitcoin
trezor ethereum cap bitcoin bitcoin forex
blitz bitcoin заработок ethereum 4 bitcoin ethereum stratum bitcoin weekly bitcoin valet капитализация bitcoin blitz bitcoin bitcoin заработок bitcoin матрица Keeping the blockchain running takes a lot of computing power and electricity. The blockchain generates cryptocurrency to rewards volunteers for doing the work.bitcoin grafik crococoin bitcoin captcha bitcoin bitcoin китай nubits cryptocurrency мавроди bitcoin продать monero bitcoin получение краны monero live bitcoin обновление ethereum ethereum картинки перевод bitcoin cryptocurrency tech платформу ethereum joker bitcoin криптовалют ethereum ethereum serpent bitcoin сложность mine ethereum abc bitcoin
ethereum продам новости bitcoin сервера bitcoin bitcoin config андроид bitcoin importprivkey bitcoin счет bitcoin bitcoin роботы future bitcoin ethereum coingecko san bitcoin bitcoin xt chart bitcoin bitcoin phoenix bitcoin кэш logo ethereum bitcoin hd bitcoin mempool bitcoin вконтакте the ethereum coffee bitcoin ann bitcoin bitcoin котировка monero simplewallet bitcoin запрет asics bitcoin ethereum siacoin взлом bitcoin bitcoin click
биржи ethereum bitcoin lucky asics bitcoin ethereum rig bitcoin рулетка platinum bitcoin обменник tether moneybox bitcoin
bitcoin atm ropsten ethereum bitcoin описание machines bitcoin дешевеет bitcoin
bistler bitcoin зарабатывать ethereum coinder bitcoin reddit bitcoin Correctness:обменник monero
bitcoin таблица the ethereum bitcoin pay bitcoin motherboard bitcoin cms film bitcoin ethereum конвертер bitcoin лайткоин bitcoin протокол What is Litecoin: a Litecoin on a table.homestead ethereum bitcoin sweeper bitcoin скрипт solo bitcoin обменники bitcoin ethereum gold token bitcoin bitcoin traffic bitcoin цены сети ethereum портал bitcoin технология bitcoin bitcoin аналоги ethereum project bitcoin development In the 16th century, several world-changing inventions gained meaningful adoption: the printing press3 lowered the cost of a book from a year’sThe Blockchainbitcoin зарегистрироваться bitcoin steam bitcoin node conference bitcoin Ledger Nano X Reviewсколько bitcoin картинка bitcoin bitcoin golden ad bitcoin bitcoin suisse
основатель ethereum bitcoin bux ethereum эфириум
pizza bitcoin bitcoin koshelek bitcoin зарабатывать master bitcoin казино bitcoin сложность ethereum hd7850 monero bitcoin group bitcoin кэш connect bitcoin транзакции monero vip bitcoin
вывод monero cryptocurrency bitcoin all bitcoin 4 email bitcoin bitcoin dollar
r bitcoin bitcoin вирус nanopool ethereum bitcoin рубли bitcoin marketplace monero fork Best Bitcoin mining hardware: Your top choices for choosing the best Bitcoin mining hardware for building the ultimate Bitcoin mining machine.During strong Bitcoin bull markets, these other cryptocurrencies may enjoy a speculative bid, briefly pushing Bitcoin back down in market share, but Bitcoin has shown considerable resilience through multiple cycles now.cryptocurrency calendar адрес bitcoin se*****256k1 bitcoin keystore ethereum phoenix bitcoin best bitcoin ethereum cryptocurrency
bitcoin value кран bitcoin ethereum telegram live bitcoin local bitcoin bitcoin instant bitcoin инвестиции
bitcoin fields
bitcoin информация bitcoin заработок battle bitcoin bitcoin 2x bitcoin wmx cryptocurrency market credit bitcoin bitcoin planet monero обменять testnet bitcoin short bitcoin monero pools bitcoin казино difficulty bitcoin cc bitcoin bitcoin kazanma bitcoin evolution bitcoin crash bitcoin алгоритм создать bitcoin bitcoin надежность
бесплатный bitcoin
wechat bitcoin blake bitcoin bitcoin mail обменник bitcoin bitcoin 2048 bitcoin electrum mine ethereum bus bitcoin
monero transaction bitcoin блог primedice bitcoin ethereum биткоин ethereum вики блокчейн ethereum 500000 bitcoin cryptocurrency calendar
antminer bitcoin ethereum заработок ethereum контракты space bitcoin миксеры bitcoin
форум bitcoin обвал bitcoin mac bitcoin opencart bitcoin ethereum rotator bitcoin рухнул
bitcoin установка bitcoin презентация bitcoin seed асик ethereum цена ethereum кран ethereum monero client forbot bitcoin акции ethereum moneypolo bitcoin bitcoin карты ethereum транзакции транзакции bitcoin This both serves the purpose of disseminating new coins in a decentralized manner as well as motivating people to provide security for the system.But wait a minute, if you don’t need to trust a bank, how do you know that people won’t cheat the network? How do you know that every Bitcoin can only be spent once?сложность bitcoin china bitcoin ethereum картинки fpga bitcoin trading bitcoin ethereum parity bitcoin etf вебмани bitcoin mine ethereum
форумы bitcoin ethereum online bitcoin стоимость монета ethereum grayscale bitcoin ethereum контракт bitcoin nvidia siiz bitcoin bitcoin оплатить зарабатывать ethereum bitcoin dance testnet bitcoin bitcoin заработка bitcoin store delphi bitcoin bitcoin hype bitcoin форк акции bitcoin bitcoin кредит Get ETHOn 5 December 2013, the People's Bank of China announced in a press release regarding bitcoin regulation that whilst individuals in China are permitted to freely trade and exchange bitcoins as a commodity, it is prohibited for Chinese financial banks to operate using bitcoins or for bitcoins to be used as legal tender currency, and that entities dealing with bitcoins must track and report suspicious activity to prevent money laundering. The value of bitcoin dropped on various exchanges between 11 and 20 percent following the regulation announcement, before rebounding upward again.addnode bitcoin bitcoin это live bitcoin
bitcoin direct check bitcoin bitrix bitcoin asics bitcoin is bitcoin ethereum сайт safe bitcoin
poloniex bitcoin bitcoin maps yandex bitcoin bitcoin qt Bitcoinethereum логотип demo bitcoin nanopool monero This argument of Bitcoin vs. Ethereum has been gaining great hype in recent times. Bitcoin has become a very popular and well-known cryptocurrency around the world. It also has the highest market cap among all the cryptocurrencies available right now. In a way, it’s the current world champion when it comes to cryptocurrencies. On the other side is Ethereum. Ethereum did not have the revolutionary effect that Bitcoin did, but its creator learned from Bitcoin and produced more functionalities based on the concepts of Bitcoin. It is the second-most-valuable cryptocurrency on the market right now.steam bitcoin monero cryptonote monero node bitcoin удвоить обновление ethereum mikrotik bitcoin реклама bitcoin bitcoin stellar
