Jump to content

Litecoin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 198.144.156.55 (talk) at 15:56, 24 April 2013 (Undid revision 551974996 by Taktao (talk)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Litecoin
"Litecoin Accepted Here" logoLitecoin client (overview tab)
Unit
PluralLitecoin, Litecoins
SymbolŁ‎
NicknameLTC
Denominations
Subunit
 0.001mLTC (millicoin)
 0.000001μLTC (microcoin)
 0.00000001Smallest unit
Demographics
Date of introduction7 October 2011
User(s)International
Issuance
Central bankNone. The Litecoin Peer-to-peer Network regulates and distributes through consensus in protocol.
Valuation
InflationLimited release (Geometric series, rate halves every 4 years reaching a final total of 84 million LTC)
Litecoin Logo
Litecoin Logo with Name

Litecoin (sign: Ł; abbrv: LTC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open source software project released under the MIT/X11 license[1]. Inspired by Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin creation and transfer is based on an open source encryption protocol and is not managed by any central authority[1][2]. Litecoin is intended to be an alternative cryptocurrency[3][4][5] to Bitcoin (BTC) and offers three key differences. Firstly, the Litecoin network processes a block every 2.5 minutes, rather than every 10 minutes, which allows for the faster confirmation of transactions[1]. Some have argued that Litecoin is in some ways superior to Bitcoin (BTC), with its four times faster confirmation of transactions and more mathetically secure hashing algorithm[5]. Each litecoin is subdivided into 100000000 smaller units, defined by eight decimal places.

A peer to peer network similar to Bitcoin's handles Litecoin's transactions, balances and issuance through Scrypt, the proof-of-work scheme (Litecoins are issued when a small enough hash value is found, at which point a block is created, the process of finding these hashes and creating blocks is called mining).[6][7] The issuing rate forms a geometric series, and the rate halves every 4 years (every 840000 blocks) reaching a final total of 84 million LTC. The memory intensive nature of Scrypt means that unlike with Bitcoin, Litecoin production is more memory intensive making it suited for GPU mining and more expensive to create FPGA or ASIC implmentations.[8][9][10][11]

Litecoins are currently traded for both fiat currencies and Bitcoins, mostly on online exchanges. Reversible transactions (such as those with credit cards) are not normally used to buy Litecoins as Litecoin transactions are irreversible, so there is the danger of chargebacks.[12][13] As of 17 April 2013, 1 LTC is worth approximately 2.03 USD or 0.024 BTC.[13][14][needs update] This makes Litecoin the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap with a cap of 35000000 USD. [15]

History

Litecoin was released via an open-source client on Github on October 7th 2011.[16] The current version of this client (as of 19th April 2013) is v0.6.3c.[17][needs update]

Other clients have also been released.[18]

More recently Litecoin has been covered in the news as a Bitcoin alternative. [19]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Litecoin.org". Litecoin.org, April 2013. Litecoin.org. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  2. ^ Satoshi, Nakamoto. "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" (PDF). Bitcoin.org. Retrieved 24 April 2013. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  3. ^ Powers, Shawn. "Cryptocurrency: Your Total Cost Is 01001010010" (PDF). Linux Journal, March 2012. Linux Journal. p. 29. Retrieved 21 October 2012.
  4. ^ BATR. "Bitcoins Risk Reward". Retrieved 24 April 2013. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  5. ^ a b Simonite, Tom. "Bitcoin Isn't the Only Cryptocurrency in Town". Retrieved 24 April 2013. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  6. ^ http://www.andykellett.com/discography/litecoin-miner-status/, Litecoin Miner Status, 21st October 2012
  7. ^ http://www.openwall.com/lists/crypt-dev/2012/09/02/1, using scrypt for user authentication, 21st October 2012
  8. ^ Coventry, Alex. "Nooshare" (PDF). MIT. Retrieved 21 October 2012. These hash functions can be tuned to require rapid access a very large memory space, making them particularly hard to optimize to specialized massively parallel hardware.
  9. ^ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3963183, Hacker News, Also, why not mine litecoins, 21st October 2012
  10. ^ https://litebit.co/project-item/rpi-ltc-miner/, Raspberry Pi: Litecoin GPU & CPU Miner, 21st October 2012
  11. ^ http://www.scoop.it/t/raspberry-pi/p/1135002351/litecoin-and-arm-cpus-a-crypto-currency-you-can-mine-on-the-25-raspberry-pi-bitcoin, Litecoin and ARM CPUs: A crypto-currency you can mine on the $25 Raspberry Pi?, 21st October 2012
  12. ^ https://blockchain.info/wallet/paypal-vs-bitcoin, Comparison of online payment methods, 21st October 2012
  13. ^ a b "LTC/USD". BTC-E. Retrieved 20 October 2012.
  14. ^ "BTC/LTC". Vircurex. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
  15. ^ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/513661/bitcoin-isnt-the-only-cryptocurrency-in-town, MIT Technology Review, Bitcoin Isn't the Only Cryptocurrency in Town, April 15, 2013
  16. ^ "Search Results: Litecoin". Abe Search. Retrieved 20 October 2012.
  17. ^ https://github.com/litecoin-project/litecoin/downloads, litecoin-project / litecoin, 21st October 2012
  18. ^ https://gitorious.org/~coblee/electrum/electrum-client-litecoin, electrum-client-litecoin, 21st October 2012
  19. ^ http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21576149-even-if-it-crashes-bitcoin-may-make-dent-financial-world-mining-digital, Mining digital gold, The Economist, April 13th, 2013

See Also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Litecoin&oldid=551976644"