Cryptocurrency has always been under the radar. With several debated regarding how it should be regulated in daily life puts the idea of cryptocurrency under doubt. As the popularity of these cryptocurrencies is off the charts you should know what you are getting into. There are several types of potential cryptocurrencies out there like bitcoin and litecoin. You should know about their pro and cons before you invest in these.
Bitcoins and litecoins can be considered as gold and silver of cryptocurrencies. Litecoin, however, has a faster transaction rate and a higher mining rate as well.
You should also know about Bitcoin Era. It is a trading bot that you can use to trade and mine bitcoins and you can earn profit from your investments.
What is bitcoin?
Bitcoin is the most popular and original cryptocurrency in the market. It was created in 2009 by a person going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto. It was designed as an alternative currency that was using blockchain technology for increased safety for financial transactions.
Bitcoin revolutionized the cryptocurrency industry as it allowed bitcoin miners to mine and more coins to the public blockchain network. It can even be bought and exchanged like stock and share through several platforms. Which makes it a mixture of both money and stocks.
What is litecoin?
Just like bitcoin, litecoin is another cryptocurrency that uses blockchain technology as a global method for digital payments. It was created in 2011 by google engineer Charlie Lee, under MIT/X11 license, as a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. As bitcoin code was made available to public, litecoin is seen as an extension of the same. Newer cryptocurrencies like litecoins are referred to as altcoins.
As litecoin uses a different form of blockchain technology, it has a much faster transaction rate and transfer speed than bitcoin. It is decentralized and uses an open source software for the transfer and creation of coins.
So what is the difference between litecoin and bitcoin?
As both of them are cryptocurrencies and share a similar structure and network, there are still several differences between them.
- The difference in their mining and algorithms
The difference in their cryptographic algorithms is the primary difference between bitcoins and litecoins. With bitcoin, it is standard SHA-256 algorithm whereas litecoin uses something known as Scrypt. This is why there is a difference in their mining speeds.
Litecoin is considered to be four times faster than bitcoin which means you get a litecoin every 2.5 minutes as compared to bitcoin which you get after 10 minutes of mining.
Both of the cryptocurrencies harness computing power to approve and process transaction. This is accomplished by miners, who in return for their work get coins. But the speed of these transactions is different because of their different algorithms.
For bitcoin mining, miners use Application-specific integrated circuits hardware systems that are specifically designed and customized for mining. This is due to the fact that SHA-256 is considered to be really complex and it stresses more power processing. This is why bitcoin mining has become really difficult for average miners as well.
However, with Scrypt, it has been designed in such a way that it prevents too much customization and therefore is really easy for an average user to mine litecoin. This is why it is much faster than bitcoin and allows average cryptocurrency users to mine litecoin without much hassle. It even allows users to use CPUs and GPUs as well.
- Processing rate for transactions
For cryptocurrency, a transaction takes a long time for confirmation as it is done by blockchain members. However, for bitcoin, any transaction is confirmed in about 10 minutes and this may fluctuate during high volume time.
For litecoin, you get the confirmation in about 2.5 minutes. This huge difference in their transaction speed is the reason why litecoin is considered much better than bitcoin.
- The total amount of coins
This is another major difference between bitcoins and litecoins. Though both of them are digital currencies, there is a finite number of coins that are available for trade. This ensures that these cryptocurrencies don’t lose their value over time.
For bitcoin, this number is twenty-one million and for litecoin, you can get up to eighty-four million coins. This might look like a huge difference but, there are some limitations to this as well.
- Mining perks
When any miner mines a block, they get a certain amount of coins for their work. The current block rewards of Bitcoin and Litecoin are 25 BTC and 50 LTC respectively. Also, these perks that you get for mining get halved after certain amount of blocks.
There are many ways you can buy or exchange these bitcoins. However, you should be on your toes as you buy these cryptocurrencies as you might not get what you expect.
