ViaBTC | LTC Halving Approaches: What Makes LTC the No. 1 Altcoin?
With a market cap of over $6.6 billion, Litecoin now steadily ranks 12th among all cryptos and is undoubtedly one of the most successful altcoin projects. At its peak, Litecoin’s 24-hour transaction volume exceeded 576,000, rivaling that of the leading crypto Bitcoin. This also makes Litecoin one of the most popular cryptos. Through 12 years of ups and downs, Litecoin managed to stand out from the many obscure projects and secured its position as the top altcoin in a fiercely competitive market. What’s the story behind Litecoin?
Litecoin’s background
Let’s first check out the background of Litecoin. Since the release of the Bitcoin whitepaper in November 2008, the concept of peer-to-peer cryptocurrency started to gain popularity within a small community. As Bitcoin gained value as a means of transaction, its price soared, and alternative cryptos emerged in the market.
This craze deeply influenced Charlie Lee, an MIT graduate and former Google employee. In November 2011, he developed Litecoin based on the underlying technical principles of Bitcoin and referred to it as a “lite” version of Bitcoin.
Litecoin’s advantages
Litecoin comes with a clear positioning: It aims to be a lightweight version of Bitcoin with improvements in block generation speed, transaction throughput, and total supply.
Improvement 1: Bitcoin produces a block about every 10 minutes, while it only takes around 2.5 minutes for Litecoin to do the same. This means that Litecoin’s throughput is also about four times that of Bitcoin. Additionally, Litecoin offers negligible transaction fees, averaging around $0.01.
Improvement 2: Bitcoin features a total supply of 21 million, whereas the Litecoin supply is capped at 84 million, four times higher than the former.
Improvement 3: In terms of algorithm, Bitcoin uses SHA-256, while Litecoin uses Scrypt. As the Scrypt algorithm is more efficient than SHA-256, Litecoin mining is more productive, making it more suitable for small miners. Furthermore, the adoption of Scrypt makes Litecoin more decentralized than Bitcoin.
Community building
If all it takes to succeed is to simply adjust Bitcoin’s source code, altcoins like Primecoin (XPM), Moleculecoin (MOL), and Megacoin (MEC) wouldn’t have crashed in the mists of time. In the crypto space, community building is the key to a project’s development. As the founder of Litecoin, Charlie Lee is highly active in the community. He frequently provides technical support and advice for community members, which ensures the continuous improvement of Litecoin.
Additionally, the Litecoin Foundation, a non-profit organization, has played a major role in the development and promotion of Litecoin, helping the project gain worldwide recognition and global adoption. According to the relevant figures, around the world, over 2,000 merchants and stores now accept LTC payments.
A fixed halving mechanism
To reduce inflation, Charlie Lee decided that the Litecoin mining reward will be halved every 840,000 blocks (approximately every four years), which is consistent with Bitcoin’s halving mechanism. Bitcoin saw its third halving in May 2020, and Litecoin will also undergo its third halving this August, cutting the block reward from 12.5 LTC to 6.25 LTC.
LTC is quoted at $90.45 on June 7, 2023, a 24-hour growth of 2.3%. If you are closely following the LTC price and would like to share your predictions for the future LTC price, don’t miss the upcoming $LTC Price Prediction Contest on ViaBTC, the world’s largest LTC mining pool. During the event, the participant with the most accurate price prediction could win amazing cash rewards!
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About ViaBTC
ViaBTC, founded in May 2016, has provided professional, efficient, safe and stable crypto mining services for over one million users in 130+ countries/regions around the world, with a cumulative mining output value of tens of billions of dollars. This world-leading, all-inclusive mining pool offers mining services spanning more than ten mainstream cryptos that include BTC, LTC, and KAS. Backed by one-stop services covering ViaBTC Pool, CoinEx Exchange, and ViaWallet, ViaBTC strives to offer global users more supporting tools, stabler and more efficient mining services, as well as better product experience.
