Currently, around 180 internationally recognized currencies are in circulation. Similar in line to the regular currencies, there are a few cryptocurrencies as well. Being the first Bitcoin always gets the highest publicity. However, there are a wide number of aspiring alternatives that provide strong competition to this currency. Litecoin is one of them, and it is also one of the most popularly traded crypto assets in terms of its traditional currency counterpart.
Litecoins are the third-largest cryptocurrencies after Bitcoin and XRP. They are measured likewise by market capitalization and function in one sense as one of the biggest online payment systems. The structuring of payment is similar to PayPal or any other online banking network. This makes litecoin white popular amongst the traditional currency and payment systems.
Litecoins are quite popular crypto-assets that are traded for many traditional currencies including Euros, USD and others. However, the most popular trade of LTC comes with US Dollars. To simplify the term for an average investor, the pair indicates the amount in dollars at which you can get one Litecoin. It is a simple barter system. Currently, you can get one Litecoin for 49.52 USD.
Similar to any other cryptocurrency, litecoin is not issued by any government authority. It is regulated by the Federal Reserve and created by an elaborate process known as mining. The supply of litecoins is kept fixed, and there are only 84 million litecoins available in circulation at the moment.
A Litecoin network generates a new block every 2.5 minutes throughout the world. Mining software then verifies it is the block and makes it available to a “miner.” The miner would next verify the transaction or block before the next block enters the chain. This is how the light coin transaction is recorded.
The first miner who successfully verifies a block is rewarded with 50 light coins. With time, this reward keeps reducing. In October 2015, this award was practically halved, and the system will continue unless the 84 millionth litecoin is mined.
The litecoin-USD pair is quite a strong trading pair currently in the market. So, it is quite valuable due to its limited supply like the terms that the value of dollars mite plummets if too many Banknotes were produced, the same is the case with litecoin. This is the reason why the production of the light coin was restricted.
The biggest advantage of using litecoin over Bitcoin is that litecoin can handle more transactions than Bitcoin within a shorter block generation time. The transaction fees of litecoin are also barely chargeable. This is what makes litecoins more worthy to the investors in the digital realm.
