ViaBTC | What Is Litecoin? What Connections Does It Have With Dogecoin?
Recently, Hong Kong, also known as a crypto hub, announced its intention to open its market for retail crypto trading. It should be noted that the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) would only allow retail trading for large-cap virtual assets included in at least two indices. LTC was among the four indices. (The five indices surveyed are Galaxy, 21 Shares, Bitwise, Nasdaq, and Wisdontree).
According to the data released by global bitcoin payment service provider BitPay in January, DOGE accounted for 9.58% of the total trading volume, ranking fourth. LTC secured a share of 24.76%, second only to BTC. It is fair to say that LTC and DOGE have become two of the most popular cryptocurrencies in the market since 2021 when the crypto market saw explosive growth. As LTC and DOGE are still little known to many investors, this article will share something about them.
What is Litecoin?
Litecoin (LTC) is a decentralized cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology. In 2011, it was launched by former Google engineer Charlie Lee intending to create a lightweight version of Bitcoin (BTC). BTC creates a new block about every 10 minutes, while the LTC blockchain can do this in just about 2.5 minutes. This means LTC can confirm transactions faster, making it more suitable for small transactions.
In addition, LTC uses Scrypt algorithm for mining, which makes it more “ASIC resistant” and “fairer” in mining than BTC. There are still many miners mining on the computer rather than with professional mining machines.
The total supply of LTC stands as 84 million, exactly four times more than the BTC supply of 21 million coins. This also means that BTC is worth far more per unit. As of March 2, 2023, BTC soared to $23,400, and LTC was priced at $97. LTC, which is undergoing its halving event, is expected to soar based on historical trends.
There are two ways to obtain LTC: mining and trading.
You can access hashrate mining in the world’s top three mining pools ViaBTC, F2Pool and Antpool, or trade on the world’s leading exchanges Binance, Coinbase and CoinEx.
What is Dogecoin?
In 2021, Tesla founder Elon Musk voiced fickle support of the meme-based dogecoin (DOGE) on Twitter, sending its price skyrocketing and triggering a craze of memecoins. Created as a joke in 2013, it was named after the “doge” meme which features a Shiba Inu. But later, it has become more popular and has been even seen as a real cryptocurrency.
Despite being started as a joke, DOGE has been widely accepted by the crypto community due to its fast transaction and low transaction fee.
DOGE does not have a cap, so there is no supply limit. As a result, it is quite affordable to many investors. It was priced at $0.08 as of March 2, 2023.
There are two ways to obtain DOGE: mining and trading.
You can access LTC hashrate and mine through AuxPoW in the world’s top three mining pools ViaBTC, F2Pool and Antpool, or trade on the world’s leading exchanges Binance, Coinbase and CoinEx.
What is the difference between LTC and DOGE?
History and background: LTC, a BTC fork, was launched by former Google engineer Charlie Lee in 2011, while DOGE was created by two programmers and launched in 2013.
Supply limit: LTC has a total supply of 84 million, while there is no supply limit on DOGE.
Block time: LTC takes 2.5 minutes on average to mint a block, whereas DOGE takes only one minute to do the same.
Stability: Over the past year, LTC has returned a rate of -11.8% in bear markets, while DOGE has returned -501.5%. It is evident that LTC is more resilient.
Value: LTC is priced higher than DOGE, making the latter more suitable for small transactions and small investments.
Community: DOGE has a much more active community that likes to use special emojis and pictures of dogs.
Overall, LTC is more of a cryptocurrency, while DOGE is more of an Internet meme often seen as a joke and social entertainment by its fans.
What connections does LTC have with DOGE?
In 2014, both LTC and DOGE were based on Scrypt algorithm. At that time, the hashrate of LTC was as high as 600GH/s, while that of DOGE was less than 40GH/S. This makes DOGE’s network extremely vulnerable to attacks. In order to enhance security, LTC founder Charles Lee suggested that the DOGE community should be merge-mined with LTC. Following a heated debate, the DOGE community finally accepted the proposal.
Merged mining means binding one or more currencies with low output value to another currency with high output value and mining at the same hashrate to earn extra coins.
It has proven to be a wise decision as time goes by. By sharing the hashrate with LTC, the hashrate of the DOGE network keeps increasing, which makes it costly to hack DOGE and ensures the security of the DOGE chain. DOGE has also become a main source of return to miners. Obviously, merged mining creates win-win results.
About ViaBTC
ViaBTC, founded in May 2016, has provided professional, efficient, safe and stable cryptocurrency 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. As a world’s top all-inclusive mining pool, it provides mining services for dozens of mainstream cryptocurrencies including BTC, LTC, ETC, etc. Backed by the one-stop, all-inclusive services spanning the mining pool, the exchange, and the wallet, ViaBTC is committed to offering global users more abundant supporting tools, stabler and more efficient mining services, and better product experience.
