One of the most popular altcoins in cryptocurrency is Litecoin. This cryptocurrency emerged in October 2011, as a choice for Bitcoin. By the way, Litecoin is a fork of the Bitcoin Core program, with the intention of improving Bitcoin. Its author Charlie Lee is the ideologue and the best known figure of this plan. Lee left his job at Google to dedicate himself entirely to the development of LTC and to achieve his goals he partnered with Xinxi Wang and Franklyn Richards.
Among his main proposals, Litecoin seeks to be a cryptocurrency with faster block generation, cheaper commissions and an efficient option for payments. This plan makes it possible to make quick payments, since it is focused on the eCommerce segment. The launch of its first version was accompanied by the following message:
We want to produce a currency similar to Bitcoin, a currency that is the silver of the gold of Bitcoin. Numerous altcoins have come and gone, several brought innovation, but each has had drawbacks. For that reason we want the superior properties that both Bitcoin and these other currencies give and generate a currency with all the positive results of them, but with hardly any of their drawbacks.
Litecoin was likewise defined as a clone of Bitcoin made directly from its source code. In addition, it stated that certain improvements had been made and several of the changing ones for the new network and cryptocurrency were modified. In this way, the genesis block of this cryptocurrency was formed on October 13, 2011: that day this new cryptocurrency officially began to function.
█ Lee, Wang and Richards intend to solve the deficiencies that Bitcoin had according to them:
• Failure to receive some transactions. • High cost of hardware and energy for mining. • High commissions for transactions. • Scalability.
The success of the project led to the fact that two years later, in November 2013, it will reach a market capitalization of 1,000 million USD.
█ Litecoin Characteristics
This cryptocurrency has a limit of 84 million accessible coins. Its agreement mechanism is based on proof of work (PoW) and the hash functionality it uses is Scrypt. This algorithm is much lighter than SHA-256, however, without sacrificing stability. Being open source development for the whole society.
Litecoin is a cryptocurrency whose block generation takes 2 and a half minutes, therefore, the Litecoin network is 4 times more immediate than Bitcoin. In addition, the average weight of the blocks is 65KB, therefore, its blockchain is quite light. Like Bitcoin, Litecoin uses halving to control its issuance and block reward for miners. Unlike Bitcoin, in LTC the halving occurs every 840,000 blocks (in Bitcoin every 210,000). The last halving in Litecoin occurred on August 5, 2019. The event brought the block rewards from 25 LTC to 12.5 and the next halving is going to be on August 6, 2023.
Just like every recent cryptocurrency, Litecoin suffers when it comes to transaction validation, a challenge it would need to address in order to compete to a high degree. Bitcoin makes it possible to review 7 transactions per second, Ethereum makes it possible to validate 15 transactions per second, VISA makes it possible to validate some 56,000 transactions per second, while Litecoin can only validate 56 transactions per second.
SegWit and the Lightning Network certainly help improve those performance numbers, and both possibilities remain accessible on Litecoin.
█ Litecoin (LTC) Fortresses
Transaction speed
The first of the giant differences between LTC and Bitcoin is the generation of blocks. Every 10 min a block is produced in Bitcoin, however in the LTC situation, it is every 2.5 min. In other words, something that makes it possible to greatly minimize the speed of transaction validation.
That is to say, viable because this cryptocurrency changes its protocol with respect to Bitcoin. Bitcoin hash functionality is SHA-256, while LTC uses Scrypt functionality, a lighter algorithm. Because it is feasible to produce blocks of less than 1MB. In addition, they allow them to be opened more instantly and expeditiously, in order to validate transactions more easily. Scalability
One of the big problems with Bitcoin is scalability. The original idea established the processing of a maximum of 7 transactions per second, something that is currently a problem. It should be noted that initially such a strong adoption was not expected and now the programmers are faced with finding a solution to the problem.
However, LTC presents a solution to this problem, supporting a maximum of 56 transactions per second. Statistically it is stronger than Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, which supports up to 15 transactions per second.
Because all cryptocurrencies are in a very early phase, work is being done to improve these options. The objective is to rival and surpass other payment solutions, such as VISA. In fact, VISA currently supports around 56,000 transactions per second, vastly higher than any blockchain currently supports. This is a problem that is being faced and that will be definitively solved in the coming years. Although today we can already use options such as the Lightning Network that allows transactions to be carried out instantly.
Mining
Like Bitcoin, Litecoin makes use of the Proof of Work or proof of work system, but it differs in the hardware necessary for mining this cryptocurrency. In the beginning, due to the little initial competition in Bitcoin, it was possible to mine blocks using the power of the CPUs of our personal computers. But as the price of Bitcoin rose, so did the competition to get a block mined. In this way, more powerful hardware began to be used, such as GPUs, and even custom hardware was developed: ASICs.
Litecoin can currently be mined with a processor and graphics card, although there are also specific ASICs for this cryptocurrency. The difficulty, which is based on the strength of the network, is still not very high and a relatively decent amount of token can be obtained.
Increased coin issuance
We have commented that LTC has blocks every 2.5 minutes on average, which reduces by four times the average time of the Bitcoin blocks, which is 10 minutes. But the differences are not just that. While Bitcoin has a maximum of approximately 21 million tokens available, while the maximum number of tokens of this currency is 84 million, that is: four times more.
In addition, the reduction in the emission of coins in each block or halving in Bitcoin occurs every 210,000 blocks, while in Litecoin this figure is every 840,000 blocks. In this case, the number of blocks needed for a halving in LTC is 4 times higher than in Bitcoin. In this way, if we take into account the average block emission time (2.5 minutes) we can conclude that the intention of having programmed the LTC halving in this way is that it takes the same time to occur on this network as on the Bitcoin network. .
A bit of history about Litecoin
Something quite curious about this token is that it is listed as the third developed cryptocurrency. The first would logically be Bitcoin, while the second is Namecoin, and Litecoin the third.
Throughout its history, the figure of the creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, has been marred by some controversies. Among them, that Lee will be part of the Coinbase exchange until the summer of 2017. Not only that, for a long time he was accused of manipulating the price and having a large number of tokens that could lead to a variation or manipulation of the value of the token. To end this criticism, he decided to sell all the units he had of Litecoin and thus end the rumor mill.
Like other cryptocurrencies, LTC also has a non-profit foundation such as the Litecoin Foundation; a non-profit organization located in Singapore. The organization focuses on improving the development of this cryptocurrency with a social purpose. It seeks to offer the best and most innovative technologies within the blockchain world and apply them in this token.
Litecoin Foundation
As with other cryptocurrencies, Litecoin is supported by the Litecoin Foundation. This is a non-profit association whose mission is to spread blockchain technology, the use and possibilities of cryptocurrency. In addition to fulfilling functions to help finance and advertise projects based on this cryptocurrency.
One of these projects was LitePay, which was being promoted by the Litecoin Foundation, with great diffusion in the media and social networks, in addition to providing significant financial support. However, LitePay and its CEO, Kaith Asare, were involved in a disgraceful scam event that was heavily attacked and criticized on social media. This led the Foundation to stop giving more money for this project and that it will no longer have this solution specially developed for payments. In a statement from the Foundation they expressed the following:
We are disappointed that this saga ended this way and we apologize for not doing all that may have uncovered these issues previously. We are currently working hard to improve our practices and ensure this does not happen again.
Litecoin has been doing perfectly well before the promise of LitePay and will continue to do so. The ecosystem is much larger than a single company and is continually growing with the support of many other companies with market-ready products joining the space and achieving their goals, making it easier for the world to use Litecoin.
█ Latest relevant milestones of Litecoin
• On January 12, 2017, version 0.13.2 was published: it was officially the first cryptocurrency to add official support to SegWit (Segregated Witness) and in this same update support was added to HD wallets (hierarchical deterministic).
• On March 2, 2017, version 0.15.1 was published: the reduction of the commission per transaction to 0.00001 LTC for each KB.
• On May 31, 2017, version 0.16.0 was published: it adds full support for native SegWit addresses and the new wallets will be HD wallets by default.
• Several important software updates are currently in the works, although none have a specific date for their implementation.
• The first and most important is the Lightning Network, which allows instant transactions and commissions are practically disposable.
• The second is Atomic Swap, which allows the exchange of a cryptocurrency in another different cryptocurrency between users, without the need for intermediaries (exchange).
• MAST, confidential transactions and colored coins are also being worked on, although these three updates are not the most preferred, these are their characteristics:
MAST: it consists of hiding the transactions through the Merkle root
• Confidential transactions: increase anonymity in transactions (it would imitate solutions such as those implemented by Monero, Zcash, Verge, etc.) using the MimbleWimble protocol. • Colored Coins: it will be used to develop new tokens within the Litecoin blockchain. It will allow the development of an ICO within the Litecoin blockchain. • In fact, the launch of Litecoin+MimbleWimble is one of the most anticipated improvements of the community, and it is expected to be complete in 2021, as shown in the official roadmap.
Currently in Litecoin the volatility of the asset is at a minimum, which provides security of taking positions with little risk to an exaggerated volatility that produces sudden changes in % in the price of the asset.
Supports: 3D/1W: 90 to 96.5 USDT is the demand area with the highest volume currently. 5D: 108 to 116 USDT is a demand zone with lower volume, but interest to increase liquidity taken on a long-term position. Resistors 3D/5D: 127 to 134 USDT is the supply zone with the highest volume, it can be taken as the necessary resistance to break in order to climb to new prices. 1W: 279 to 296 USDT is the weekly resistance zone which would be the last to go looking for new ATH in the asset.
Terms:
T1, T2 = Target 1, Target 2 Zone1, Zone2 = These are zones in which the price can have an impulse.
Conclusions
Litecoin from its ATH on May 7, 2021 at a value of 387 USDT based on the closing price has had a drop of more than 75%, it is currently at lows lower than those of July 2021.
The volatility is at a minimum and long-term purchases are beginning to be found in the asset. In general, I would seek to buy in the range of 90-96.5 USDT in spot to take a long-term position, aiming for each Litecoin to have a value 559 USDT.
All the indicators come to indicate oversold, but I prefer to use technical analysis concepts combined with fundamentals for my spot, giving volume information higher priority than moving averages or oscillators.
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