Here we'll exclusively look at Litecoin will take a look at how Litecoin was created and why it was created. We'll take a look a little bit about the evolution and I'll make some predictions for what I think this Litecoin is going to do in the future.
How Litecoin Started
So a quick history lesson before we get started, Litecoin was created back in October 2011, which makes it one of the first Altcoins in circulation. It was created by this guy, Charlie Lee, and it was really created to solve a lot of problems that Bitcoin was facing.
So what Charlie did was reduce the block time of Bitcoin from 600 seconds to Litecoin’s 150 seconds. By doing this he was able to confirm transactions a lot faster on the network and he was able to lower the cost of transactions on the network as well.
Litecoin was also the first Cryptocurrency to use the script algorithm. Which is different from Bitcoin's sha256 algorithm. The reason that this was so important, especially back in 2011, is that when Bitcoin was gaining in popularity a lot of people were building specialized mining hardware.
Why this is so important is that back in 2011 when people were jumping on the Bitcoin bandwagon, they were developing specialized async mining rigs. This left Altcoins at a significant disadvantage. And it really took the mining capability away from desktop PCs and into these specialized mining farms.
Litecoin using the Scrypt algorithm meant that it needed a different type of miner. This meant that it was able to be mined on the desktop for a lot longer until eventually they came out with the Antminers. Now of course, Litecoin is also typically mined on specialized hardware.
It's important to understand that Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin. So all of the mechanisms that were originally included in Bitcoin followed through to Litecoin. Litecoin was really just a modification of the original Bitcoin protocol.
One advantage of Litecoin is that it has traditionally been a lot more flexible and Litecoin is a lot faster to adapt new technologies than Bitcoin. Bitcoin has so many miners and so many people involved. There's so much money involved that there's a real resistance to upgrade the network in fear of cutting into one person's territory.
A great example of this was that everybody knew that Bitcoin needed to adjust its block sizes up from 1MB, and yet the Bitcoin miners were so opposed to this because the miners were the ones that we're confirming the transactions on the network and receiving the fees for doing so. They had a disproportionate amount of power over the network and they were also getting paid.
On the other hand, Litecoin because it had a smaller mining pool and it had a different set of miners was able to quickly identify this problem, but because it didn't have this huge community that Bitcoin had, it was able to reach a consensus for segwit and the Lightning Network way before Bitcoin ever could.
Litecoin vs Bitcoin Explained
As far as development goes, has always been a step ahead of Bitcoin mainly because Bitcoin is like a giant destroyer in the water and Litecoin is sort of like a small speedboat that's able to maneuver around.
This is going to undoubtedly continue in the future. While Bitcoin is going to continue to evolve, there are definitely going to continue to be these political battles going on between the Bitcoin miners, the users, and the people that have a vision for the future.
Litecoin is still facing those same problems, but because there isn't a lot of financial incentive and because of the smaller community, they're going to be much more flexible and they are going to be able to adopt new protocols and changes much quicker than Bitcoin.
Why Does Litecoin Need to Exist Right Now?
That's an excellent question. A lot of the advantages of Litecoin that were really huge selling features six months ago, look like now they aren't such a big deal. Except the transaction fees on Litecoin have always been much lower than Bitcoin, but that may soon change.
Bitcoin's addition of the Lightning Network and the ability to process payments off the public ledger, means the fees on Bitcoin are supposed to drop as well. With the Lightning Network and segregated witness (segwit), the confirmation times should drop as well. So the fact that there's a 600 second block time wont be nearly as important as it was.
Could Bitcoin Slow Litecoin's Growth?
Well, yes, that's a distinct possibility. If the implementation of the Lightning Network goes correctly and Bitcoin sees its confirmation times drop along with the transaction fees drop, then yes, that could be a significant impact in Litecoin. Is this realistically going to happen? I wouldn't hold my breath.
There's a lot of different ways to adopt technology and the way that you think it's going to work is sometimes different from the way that it's actually rolled out. In addition to that, we're also going to have to make the assumption that as Bitcoin evolves, it's going to be able to continually service customer's needs.
One of the biggest evolution in Cryptocurrencies is the Smart Contract. The reason that Ethereum is the world's second largest Cryptocurrency right now and is actually taking a lot of volume away from Bitcoin, is the fact that it's able to service these Smart Contracts.
When Bitcoin was originally designed Smart Contracts were not even thought of. There have been a few solutions proposed on how we can use Smart Contracts on the older Blockchains. Right now there is one potential solution for enabling smart contracts which would allow coins like Litecoin and Bitcoin to use them.
Looking at the history of both Bitcoin and Litecoin, it is easy to guess which will adopt the new Smart Contract technology first. If we are using their historical track record as an indicator, It will probably be Litecoin which adopts the Smart Contract technology first.
So yes, maybe Bitcoin is going to get its transaction times down, maybe it's going to even get its confirmation times down, but that's not the only thing that Cryptocurrencies are going to do or they're going to need to focus on.
It's likely that Bitcoin will continue to improve. If Litecoin continues to be more innovative, and if Litecoin continues to adopt new technologies earlier than Bitcoin, Litecoin will continue to improve at a faster.
So for that reason, I think in the short term that Litecoin having to compete with the upgrades in the Bitcoin Network isn't a big problem. I think that Litecoin is going to face a lot stiffer competition than they have for the last couple years. Despite this, I see Litecoin as being the solution provider and providing the technology to the older Blockchain's first.
A lot of people in Bitcoin can't wait and see what happens on the Litecoin network. Then they say "OK, that was a good idea", or "no, that wasn't a good idea". So for that reason, I'm really bullish on Litecoin because I think that they'll always be the leader in the older Blockchain technologies.
Litecoin and Bitcoin Compared
So if we look right now at Litecoin, it's currently the world's fifth largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $16,220,937,937. You compare that to Bitcoin, $256,933,859,710 and you can see that there is a huge difference in value.
That's not to say that Litecoin doesn't have its place in the market, or that It's proportionately useful to Bitcoin. It's just really showing Bitcoins dominance in the Cryptocurrency markets.
If we go look at the price, chart will see that this year has just been incredible for Litecoin, although we did see a similar pattern back in the end of 2013 were Litecoin actually shot up from a price of $2 all the way up to $40 plus dollars. So it's interesting to look at this chart here.
Maybe this pattern is going to repeat and this is a similar pattern that was in Bitcoin.
So depending on how you look at the technology and depending on how you think things are going to play out, you may think that we're in another bubble like we were in 2014. Or you may think that 2014 was just a natural correction and that the 2 to 3 years that followed was actually where the community as a whole and people a whole were figuring out what we're going to do with Cryptocurrencies.
In early 2017 we saw that Cryptocurrencies have come back into favor. We've seen crazy growth again and now Litecoin is sitting at an all time high. You compare that to where it was sitting even six months ago. And that's really some exceptional growth.
Litecoin Transaction Have High Volume With Low Fees
Looking at the comparisons between Litecoin, Dash, and Monero you can actually see that Litecoin is still has a huge amount of a volume in transactions. Litecoin is actually doing a lot more transactions in volume than Dash and Monero combined.
If you look at the transaction fees, which is another good indicator, You'll see that a Litecoin actually has a huge advantage over Monero. I won't include Bitcoin because Bitcoin is so much more expensive. Bitcoin, even with the new implementations being rolled out slowly has gone down off it's high, but it's still the most expensive Cryptocurrency network to use.
If we look at Dash in, we can still see that Litecoin really by transaction volume is, is very, very good and effective and a great way to transfer payments between two parties.
New Features Coming Soon to Litecoin
Atomic swaps have been getting a lot of attention lately. Atomic swaps basically let people change currencies without the need for a third party.
For example, what happens if Mary has 200 Litecoin and she wants to exchange them for Bitcoin with Peter. An atomic swap would let them do that without the need of a 3rd party.
Mary would send Peter the Litecoins and Peter would send Mary the Bitcoins in a way where both parties were secure. Both Mary and Peter would swap their coins virtually without a 3rd party taking a commission. So atomic swaps could be a really big deal in the future.
Because everybody's really excited with atomic swaps, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Litecoin was one of the first networks to adopt atomic swaps mainstream and really be the the driving force behind it. And then I wouldn't be surprised if Bitcoin, like it has done historically, follows behind Litecoin in the adoption of technology.
Litecoin Price Predictions
Well Litecoin's price is going to follow closely with Bitcoins. I think that because Litecoin makes up for such a small amount of the total volume of Cryptocurrencies. As long as Bitcoin keeps performing well, we'll see Litecoin perform equally as well.
Over the short term, I think that Litecoin might not grow as quickly as Bitcoin, especially over the next maybe 2 months. If I was to look at a 12 month view, I think that Litecoin will increase more than Bitcoin.
I think that because Litecoin is smaller, it has more potential short term growth, and they'll continue to implement the technologies faster. I think that the growth potential for Litecoin far exceeds the growth potential for Bitcoin over the next 12 months.
What Do You Think?
Now that I've covered Litecoin's start, its current place in the market, and future predictions, let me know what you think. Did you invest in Litecoin early on? What do you think of Litecoin's performance today? How do you think Litecoin will preform compared to Bitcoin in the next 12 months. Let me know in the comments below.