The Bitcoin solution equals Litecoin
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of Litecoin, first we must talk about Bitcoin and why Bitcoin even lead to the creation of Litecoin. When Bitcoin made its debut back in January of 2009, it was the first of its kind in the crypto space. A lot of folks didn’t understand what it was, or how it worked. As Bitcoin became more popular over time, people started to understand its frame work and its block chain technology, that is used for peer to peer transactions and ledger of accounting.
As the Bitcoin network took on more users and expanded, the block chain had to account for more transactions. Developers and engineers were starting to notice a few flaws with Bitcoin, which they saw as “holding back its TRUE potential”, of being used as a form of REAL money for the entire world. The following three major problems below were discovered which eventually lead to the idea of a new coin later called Litecoin.
- Energy Consumption – Bitcoin uses a tremendous amount of energy consumption for miners, which creates a
problem for miners that are solving complex math problems on computers, so that transactions can be confirmed. This leads to high cost utility bills for consumption of electricity just to keep the whole network going and transaction confirmations within a block on the blockchain running smoothly. - Slow confirmations – It has slow confirmation times for processing transactions. Another wards, if someone wanted to use Bitcoin to buy a Pizza in a real-world use case scenario, by the time the individual’s transaction is processed the Pizza would be cold.
- High FEES – With more electricity being used and confirmation times lagging, the FEES for buying and selling with Bitcoin are often way to high as well.
problem for miners that are solving complex math problems on computers, so that transactions can be confirmed. This leads to high cost utility bills for consumption of electricity just to keep the whole network going and transaction confirmations within a block on the blockchain running smoothly.
The creation of Litecoin
As these problems became more apparent over time, other developers and engineers started to look at the code of Bitcoin to improve upon what it was intended for in the first place. By October of 2011, a man by the name of Charlie Lee (who was a lead developer/engineer working for Coinbase) decided it was time to create a spinoff of Bitcoin with a much better version in mind.
His project of Litecoin, had to rival Bitcoin or at least run parallel to its concept of creation and vision, which Satoshi Nakamoto originally had in mind for Bitcoin.
So, Charlie Lee set out with a goal to create Litecoin, which is often referred to as the digital silver and Bitcoin being the digital equivalent of gold. The total amount of coins to be created is 84 million coins within its ecosystem. This is far more than Bitcoins total supply of 21 million, making it more appealing to use as a currency from a supply perspective.
The main goal was to solve the problems that Bitcoin has. Let’s examine the network that solves a lot of these problems that Bitcoin currently is faced with.
Bitcoin network versus the Lightening network
Litecoin rides on the Lightening network which is much more robust and send and receive messages are far faster than those of Bitcoin network, which is the original blockchain. Just from personal use for myself, I have noticed that Bitcoin’s transaction times for confirmations can last 10 minutes or more depending on the amount of Satoshi being sent and received. Larger transactions can take hours to confirm.
The Lightening network is a layer 2 payment protocol that operates on top of the block chain for a crypto currency such as Litecoin. This is in turn, is supposed to increase transaction times which also is said to solve the scalability issues that Bitcoin has. Scalability for Bitcoin was and still is, the most critical factor that keeps Bitcoin from being used for real world use-case of buying goods and services from a brick and mortar store.
How it basically works, is the lightening network enables users to conduct several transactions outside the main blockchain and then record them into a single transaction. This works extremely well for smaller transactions as well as larger transactions. However, larger transactions are still confirmed on the block chain rather than on the lightening network due to security concerns.
Litecoin’s FEES are much lower than Bitcoins and requires less energy consumption to mine the coins due to the confirmation problems that are solved with the lightening network.
The Litecoin Foundation
Another major factor that drives adoption for a crypto currency to be used as a real currency for real world use, is the community. Litecoin has its own foundation which is a Non-Profit Organization made up of people all around the globe, that is growing larger every day.
Unlike the Bitcoin community, which has been fighting amongst themselves over hard forks and creating a new version of Bitcoin, the Litecoin foundation is much more stable. Bitcoin now has 3 versions of BTC and Litecoin has 2, which are Litecoin and Litecoin Cash. Litecoin Cash was created on February 2018 due to a hard fork at block 1371111 in the existing Litecoin blockchain.
The fork was not meant to separate or run on a block chain that runs away from the original Litecoin network and instead runs parallel to the original block chain. This is one of the main reasons Litecoin’s community remains stable unlike Bitcoins community. This ensures that Litecoin will continue to grow and be adopted at a much faster pace than Bitcoin.
Another great perk to Litecoin’s Foundation is it’s partnerships it has acquired over the last 7 years. The organization has partnerships with multiple companies and organizations around the world, some of which are listed below.
Major Partnerships for the Litecoin Foundation:
- U.N.
- UFC
- Token Pay
- 9% equity in WEG Bank AG
- CoolBitX
- Aliant Payment Systems
Final Thoughts on Litecoin price prediction
Litecoin is still in its infancy as far as the rate of users that use the coin. It is still growing and being adopted by people across the globe and should pick up pace in the years ahead. There are numerous coins that have been created since Litecoin but Litecoin remains to be a leading coin in the Crypto space and rightfully so.
It was the second coin to be created outside of Bitcoin and if we look at what Sitoshi was trying to accomplish with Bitcoin, one could argue… that Litecoin is a better version of Bitcoin.
Litecoin is also compatible with just about every wallet that you can imagine, including the TREZOR wallet device, which is the wallet I use for storing cryptos offline and off the exchanges. You can learn more about this device by clicking on this link to the TREZOR Wallet.
This is a great consideration for investors who are making an investment in LTC and holding it. They don’t have to worry about NOT having a place to store it and its 100% safe and in your possession.
Regarding the price of Litecoin, it has had a huge surge in 2017 and hit a peak of around 420.00 in late December of 2017. Since then, the coin has had a major drop in price down into the 30’s range (as of the time I’m writing this 01/19/2019.) Will Litecoin parish?
I believe the price of Litecoin will return to all time High’s in the future and surpass its all-time high prices we have already seen. As for its use as a global currency I believe it is in the running for one of the top picks from Governments as an alternative means of exchange for money.
There are few others that might take the crown such as Ripple because its Centralized within its block chain architecture, which gives Governments more control over the coin’s money supply. Litecoin is decentralized, which offers the privacy and security we so desperately need for the safety of a balanced Eco system and keeps Banks honest. With Litecoin’s partnerships and the money backing the coin and its Foundation, I think it would be safe to say that Litecoin is going to be around for at least the next 15 to 20 years at least.
These are just my opinions. I am an investor of many different cryptos and have been holding on to my investments for a year now, so my opinion might be a bit bias … Then again maybe not! Please feel free to share your thoughts and opinions on Litecoin and what you think it’s future will be like. We would love to hear your thoughts on this crypto currency.