Homework Season 2 Task 1: Altcoins – Part1 "Looking beyond the Bitcoin" | lesson by @yohan2on

Greetings, Steemians. It's another academic week at the crypto academy, and I had the privilege of learning from Steemit crypto professor @yohan2on, who lectured on "Altcoin- Part 1." For my submission today, i will be explaining Litecoins which is one of the Altcoins we have. Before i begin with my post, I will like to explain a bit of Altcoins before.

Alternative cryptocurrencies, or altcoins, were created in the aftermath of Bitcoin's popularity. They present themselves as safer alternatives to Bitcoin in general. Most altcoins are attempting to address any perceived Bitcoin flaws by developing strategic advantages in newer versions.

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The phrase "altcoin" is made up of two words: "alt" and "coin," with alt meaning "alternative" and coin meaning "cryptocurrency." They denote a form of cryptocurrency that is an alternative to the digital Bitcoin currency when used together. Following Bitcoin's popularity, a slew of other peer-to-peer digital currencies have sprung up to try to replicate it.

Many altcoins are based on the same basic structure as Bitcoin. As a result, the majority of altcoins are peer-to-peer, necessitate a mining mechanism in which users solve difficult problems in cracking blocks, and provide safe and low-cost ways to conduct web transactions. However, despite certain similarities, altcoins differ significantly from one another.

Ethereum (ETH), Stellar (XLM), Ripples (XRP), Litecoin (LTC), and several others are examples of Altcoins. In this post, I will focus on Litecoin (LTC).

Explaining Litecoins

Litecoin (LTC) is a cryptocurrency that was made by Charles "Charlie" Lee in October 2011. Litecoin is a Bitcoin clone (BTC). Litecoin is an open-source that is focused on global payment network that is independent of any central authority.

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You have complete leverage over your funds because Litecoin is decentralized. This means you won't have to fill out any paperwork in order to submit your coins!

Because of these advantages, Litecoin is an excellent choice for sending and receiving money. Let's say I want to send money to someone in another country. Going to the bank and using their system would be costly, and it will take time to reach the individual, but using litecoins makes the process simpler and quicker. Lets take a look at the steps to see how easy it is.

A Litecoin wallet address is needed to receive funds. Anyone can create a Litecoin wallet for free, and the number of wallets you can create is unlimited. Consider it a savings account.

Lets say I access my Litecoin wallet and send Litecoin to my friend wallet address. Lets say I decide to send him ten Litecoins.

The funds are sent to the Litecoin blockchain after I sends them.

Thousands of other transactions can be processed on the Litecoin blockchain as well. A new block is formed every 2.5 minutes. Consider a block to be a transaction's container.
My transaction is among those carried by the block (or container). The transaction must be checked as valid before the funds are sent to his wallet.

There is no single authority to validate a transaction in Litecoin because it is decentralized. Instead, miners, a group of volunteers, use their computing resources to solve extremely complex puzzles. This is how transaction blocks (or containers in our case) are validated.
The miners have solved the puzzle, checked all of the transactions in that block, and my friend now has his funds after 2.5 minutes.

Transaction Speed

Now that you have a basic understanding of how a Litecoin transaction operates, let's dig a little deeper into the technology's capabilities.

So, Litecoin's whole purpose was to fix Bitcoin's vulnerabilities, right? Each Bitcoin block, on the other hand, takes ten minutes to validate. At 2.5 minutes, Litecoin is four times quicker. This aspect is really important if Litecoin is to become a global payment system.

The block has one confirmation after 2.5 minutes. This implies that it cannot be undone. Some merchants require additional confirmations before processing a transaction for added security.
Litecoin, on the other hand, would have four block confirmations in the same time it would take Bitcoin to get one.

Scalability

Another factor to remember is the Litecoin blockchain's scalability. scaling refers to the ability to manage more transactions. But there is still a limit on what can be done.

Bitcoin can only process 7 transactions per second at the most. The second most common blockchain, Ethereum, has a maximum transaction rate of 15 transactions per second. How many do you believe Litecoin is capable of handling?

Litecoin, on the other hand, can process up to 56 transactions per second! This makes it significantly faster than Bitcoin and Ethereum combined! As Litecoin's popularity grows in the future, it will be able to meet the increased demand.

Security

Almost every program you've ever used will be hosted on a single server. This means you're entrusting your sensitive details to a third-party firm to keep it safe from hackers.

A good example of a centralized organization is your bank. A criminal might theoretically gain access to your bank account (and steal all of your money) if they were able to hack their central servers. Unfortunately, centralized hacks occur often, and there is nothing you can do to prevent them.

That is, until decentralized payment systems like Litecoin were developed! Only if someone owned 51 percent or more of the Litecoin network could it be hacked. To do so, a hacker will need to produce more than 51% of the mining computing capacity across the entire network.

Since the network is much too large for anybody to gain that much leverage, the chances of this happening are limited to none. To be successful, it would take millions, if not billions, of dollars in Litecoin. And they'd only have power for a short period of time... So, in any case, it would be pointless.The most important factor is the security of your Litecoins. This is dependent on how and where you store them. There are many different types of Litecoin wallets available, each with varying levels of protection.

Is Litecoin a Safe Investment?

Yes, it is safe to invest in Litecoin for the long term; however, if you are just planning to invest for a month or less, you should avoid it. Litecoin is a very stable coin for long-term investors. Litecoin is the second-oldest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, with superior technology and lower transaction fees than Bitcoin.

Litecoin's Supply Limit
There are a limited number of Litecoins that can be mined (84 million). The pace at which the coins enter the market may also influence availability.

Benefits of litecoin

Despite the fact that Litecoin was derived from Bitcoin, it has a number of distinct advantages. Among them are the following:

• Transactions are processed and confirmed faster than on the Bitcoin network. This clearly indicates that it is more reliable, and the transaction costs are much lower and more manageable.

• Litecoin has a greater number of coins in circulation, totaling about 84 billion, almost four times the capacity of the Bitcoin network. This means less competition in the mining industry and a higher profit margin.

• The Scrypt hashing algorithm, which is used in Litecoin, is safer than other hashing algorithms. Unlike the SHA-256 algorithm, Scrypt allows for more effective computing power in this case.

• Litecoin has made significant gains in the market, especially in the 2017 financial year. In the current year, 2018, it is listed as the market's 6th largest capitalization, with profit margins skyrocketing as early as the first week of the year.

• Furthermore, the Litecoin is very versatile, allowing you to buy it with other Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoins or via most trading sites such as Coinbase, Cyrptopia, and others.

Disadvantages of Litecoin Investments

The biggest disadvantage of Litecoin is its complete anonymity, which gives it a poor reputation because it is used for illegal purposes on the DarkNet. The mining industry is far too concentrated. Since the launch of the Litecoin skilled mining machine at the start of last year, it has been stated that in the presence of mines, computing power has surpassed 50% of total network computing power, resulting in an unequal distribution.

Since Litecoins are not regulated by a central authority, you can feel hesitant to use them. If your coin is stolen or lost, the money is gone and there is nothing you can do about it. The client code is not well maintained and is based on an outdated Bitcoin version. The price is purely speculative, and Litecoins have few applications.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that Litecoin has a few long-standing advantages over Bitcoin and is actually the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, it's important to note that the cryptocurrency industry is still largely unregulated. Lets take a few recap here,

• Litecoin Total Supply: 84 million coins
• Litecoin Transaction Time: 5 minutes
• Maximum Transactions Per Second: 56
• First Ever Transaction: 13 October 2011
• Mining: Proof-of-Work (Scrypt)

If you plan to invest in Litecoin (or any other altcoin), make sure to use a reputable broker and only invest money you can afford to lose. Thank you for reading and much thanks to prof @yohan2on for this wonderful lecture and also to prof @kouba01 for your tireless efforts as well.