In this article, we are going to focus on Litecoin, including how it came to be, what it is, what is the technology behind it and how the Litecoin price is determined on the market. As with other Altcoins that started appearing after the Bitcoin, the Litecoin gained traction, and it made a foothold on the market for its specific characteristics. If you want to know more about cryptocurrency, you should read Blockbid’s Bitcoin guide.
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What is Litecoin?
Litecoin or its abbreviation and ticker symbol LTC is a P2P cryptocurrency and an open-source software project. It was created under the MIT/X11 license, which is a permissive software license developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The crypto-coins are transferred through an open-source cryptographic protocol, so if you understand the way Bitcoin transfers work, you already know how Litecoins work.
The Litecoin software project was developed by Charlie Lee (former Google employee), and it was released through an open-source client on GitHub on October 7, 2011, and it went live a week later on October 13. The main difference between Bitcoin and Litecoin is in the processing time, so if you need at least 10 minutes for a Bitcoin transaction, a Litecoin transaction would be done in less than 3 minutes.
The Litecoin was indeed created as an alternative (the true Altcoin), with the goal to solve a lot of the problems Bitcoin had. The Litecoin was also the first cryptocurrency, which used a different script algorithm then the Bitcoin and allowed miners to mine the crypto-coins without investing in expensive equipment, but rather to use their desktop computers.
The Litecoin stretched to $1 billion in market capitalisation in November 2013. Another interesting fact about the Litecoin is that in May 2017, the first Lightning Network transaction was completed through Litecoin, transferring 0.00000001 LTC from Zürich to San Francisco in under one second. Moreover, in February 2018, Litecoins became a payment method for the EU online retailer Alza.cz.
The Litecoin price
As with any cryptocurrency on the market, it’s hard to speculate about the price and how it will be affected in the future. Other than the already known dynamics of the supply and demand principals, cryptocurrencies tend to be more volatile and subjected to other external factors, not all of them familiar to the public.
As of the writing of this article, Litecoin has the 7th largest market cap in the world, with 11,967,949,134 AUD. The Litecoin price is at 212 AUD, and it has a current circulating supply of 56.4 million coins, and a total volume exchanged of 261,609,744 AUD.
Analysis show, however, that the price of the Litecoin is tied to the price of the Bitcoin, so whenever the Bitcoin has a surge in price, the Litecoin also gets an increase. The value behind the Litecoin is, as with any other cryptocurrency on the market, in the technology, and the fact that this crypto-coin is far more adaptable in implementing changes than the Bitcoin is.
Exchange Litecoin to AUD
How can you acquire Litecoins?
I. Mining
The good news is that mining Litecoins requires less sophisticated equipment than mining Bitcoins does, but the bad news is that it’s still expensive. However, if you’re interested in mining Litecoins nonetheless, this is the way to do it:
- Download a version of a pooler’s CPU miner (solo mining is not viable anymore).
- Install the program and set up the mining pool (you’ll also need a mining_proxy, which supports the Stratum protocol).
- Register an account (you need this to start mining and to create a pool with other miners/workers)with some of the websites that offer the service.
- Start mining.
II. Exchanges
If you’re not technologically savvy or you just don’t want to bother with mining, then you should use an exchange where you can buy your Litecoins. If you are based in Australia, the most profitable transaction is to exchange Litecoin to AUD because it’s the local currency and you won’t have to pay additional conversion fees.
Cryptocurrency exchanges function on a similar principle as traditional ones — you open an account where you verify your identity by providing personal details, and then you gain access to the trading floor. Once you’re there, you can place orders and buy or sell any cryptocurrency offered on the exchange.
After you place and pay for your order, you gain the crypto-coin in the online wallet provided to you by the exchange. You can keep your coins there for further trading, or you can transfer them to your personal crypto wallet for safekeeping.
Buy Litecoin in Australia
If you made the decision to start trading with cryptocurrencies and you want to buy Litecoin in Australia, always make sure you’re using a verified local exchange. Blockbid is a Melbourne-based virtual cryptocurrency platform, which allows traders to trade more crypto-coins on a single platform than any other exchange in the world.
This is a huge advantage for anyone who doesn’t want to lose time (since crypto transactions are time-sensitive) in changing accounts between different platforms or lose money in conversations.
The number of crypto-coins and fiat currencies (AUD, USD and EUR) supported on the platform is also significant, and you can choose between all the popular Altcoins for a more diverse trading experience. The transaction fees are 0.1 percent, and the platform can perform up to 1 million transactions in a second.
Another important feature is the security, and 95 percent of the crypto-assets are kept in an offline multi-signature hardware vault, and Blockbid is one of the first exchanges with cybersecurity insurance. The interface is user-friendly, so you can start trading there even if you’re a beginner. The platform was designed intuitively exactly for that purpose, so that it can accommodate all level traders.
Blockbid is fully compliant with Australian cryptocurrency laws and AML/CTF guidelines, and it’s registered with AUSTRAC. You can follow the Litecoin price, trade Litecoins or some other crypto-coin — it’s up to you.