If you happen to be new to the Cryptocurrency space, this question may have run through your head already. If not, at some point or another, it surely will. Litecoin has been dubbed the
“Silver to Bitcoin’s Gold,” by its creator Charlie Lee. Litecoin is not only holding up that designation but is looking to one day even pass it. To learn what the future of the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is, we must first learn where it came from.
Read on to learn about what is dubbed to be the
“Litecoin, The Payment Crypto.”
Lite Beginnings
Litecoin was created by a man named Charlie Lee, who served as an engineer for Google, followed by a position as the Director of Engineering at a very popular cryptocurrency exchange desk called Coinbase.
Litecoin, (Called LTC for short, it’s ticker symbol,) was released on GitHub on October 7, 2011. GitHub is a popular hosting service where software developers can share and collaborate on open-source, or free to use and share software/programming source-code projects.
The Launch of the Litecoin Blockchain occurred on October 13, 2011. Bitcoin launched in January of 2009.
Why is this important?
It is imperative to understand that Litecoin is derived from the Bitcoin source code. In actuality, Litecoin is a “Clone,” of Bitcoin, also known as a fork.
Litecoin has four major differences over its older brother BTC.
1.LTC blocks are processed on an average of three times faster than Bitcoin’s, 2.5 minutes over 10. This allows for faster fund transfer confirmations.
2.Mining Litecoin is done on the Scrypt Proof of Work algorithm.
3.The maximum supply is 84 million. (BTC max supply is 21 million.)
4.Litecoin has a full-time non-profit development team who is dedicated to the success of the Litecoin platform. (Bitcoins founder Satoshi Nakamoto is an unknown person or group who is rumored to be deceased. )
What is a Payment Crypto?
The world as we know it is changing. When Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin in 2009, he placed a secret message into the first block of the blockchain known as the Genesis block. The message reads,
“The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of [the] second bailout for banks.”
This is understood by many to be a snide comment of the Crypto’s creator in relation to the worldwide banking system and the instability of national economies from the practice of Fractional-reserve-banking. Financial crisis’ around the globe, coupled with central banks collapsing, have given many people the fear that economies not only can but will collapse leaving us all doomed. Bitcoin was the first of it’s kind, a prototype to facilitate monetary value transfer in a new way.
Generally Cryptocurrencies are decentralized. This means that there is no central “Bank” (Like the Federal Reserve,) controlling the value. BTC and LTC are given value due to the fact that the laws of thermodynamics apply in the “Proof of work” mining concept. Basically, it means that since money, time, electricity or other resources are required to “mine’ the coins, a certain value, monetary or otherwise, must be applied. People put value in cryptocurrencies as well, which also grows the coins financial worth.
Litecoin is the new and improved Bitcoin. Litecoin has all the benefits of Bitcoin without the drawbacks.
- LTC is Faster
- LTC is Quicker
- LTC can be bought Cheaper! (For Now.)
Why Litecoin?
Litecoin has been built to be the future of digital payments and payments processing. Charlie Lee knew what he was doing when creating Litecoin. As a part of the non-profit organization Litecoin.org, Charlie Lee has a personal vested interested in the success of Litecoin. Plus it is his baby. He is reported to have sold most, if not all, of his Litecoin already.Litecoin has been picked by many different payment processing companies as the prime payment crypto. Litecoin was built for this.
The Shift Card is said to be the US’ first Crypto debit card. A user simply connects their Coinbase account, and can then spend their crypto anywhere a VISA card is accepted.
TenX offers a wallet app for either iOS or Android and provides customers with a swipe-able debit card linked to the user's wallet app. This allows users to pay at the POS (Point of Sale) using the Litecoin Crypto anywhere that Visa/MasterCard is accepted.
Spectrocoin offers a prepaid debit card in which you can load your crypto to, store on a safe wallet, and use just about anywhere in the world.
And many more are following suit. The future of Cryptocurrency as a whole is payment processing, and LTC is leading the way. Litecoin is poised to shoot up in value, and thanks to many companies collaborating with the Litecoin foundation, the future looks very bright. Litecoin has been added to almost every major Crypto exchange out there, and companies like ABRA are using the Litecoin technology to run and offer new products and businesses. Even Entrepreneurs can easily add Litecoin as an accepted payment method in their stores, or on their websites. If you can integrate Paypal, you can integrate Litecoin.
Litecoin is here to stay and will become the future of payment transactions worldwide.
—
BIO
Chris is a student of the crypto future. He is new to the crypto game, however is thrilled to be a part of the largely growing, newly shaped crypto community. If he isn’t trading on Binance or chatting in a Telegram chat about Cryptos, he can be found in the best Crypto Facebook group Lemons to Lambo’s!
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Image Credit: EivindPedersen
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litecoin#Differences_from_Bitcoin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub
http://litecoin-foundation.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
https://www.shiftpayments.com/card
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