LightCoin was created in 2011. LightCoin is based on the same code as Bitcoin, but with a few modifications, in order to solve two shortcomings of its predecessor: transaction speed and access to the mining process.
This cryptocurrency was developed by former Google employee Charles Lee in 2011.
Litecoin has experienced both rapid growth and lightning-fast drops throughout its existence. As for 2020, Litecoin showed a growth of more than 140%. So what are the forecasts for litecoin to expect in 2021?
“Lightcoin is one of the coins that has not yet updated its 2017 historical high. Since the beginning of December, LTC has been growing in price, but the volatility of the coin is quite strong. Each bounce is accompanied by further sharp downward fall. Now I rather expect a correction of litecoin in the coming week. In fact, the sharp rise of the last week was due to the April Fool’s joke posted on Litecoin’s Twitter about rebranding the coin to BitcoinLite. Many believed it and thought that the cryptocurrency had a new market strategy that would allow it to regain its lost market position.
In 2021, Bitcoin potentially has a chance to reach $320-$350. Most of this growth is due to the growth of the rest of the cryptocurrency market. But there is also news that relates specifically to litecoin. For example, the creation of exchange-traded financial products tied to LTC. Two such ETP products have been launched by ETC Group and CoinShares. “Litecoin prospects in 2021 – what to expect?
Litecoin’s advantages over bitcoin – is bitcoin really better?
If we talk about the differences between Litecoin and Bitcoin, despite the fact that Litecoin is a fork of BTC, these differences are many. To a large extent, these differences will have to do with the rating and status of these cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin, as we know, is the market leader and is ahead of all market changes, while Litecoin used to be mentioned as a silver cryptocurrency, but over time its influence has been downplayed to a minimum. Today, the outlook for Litecoin remains rather ambiguous.
When it comes to the early years of cryptocurrency creation, lightcoin attracted the attention of the cryptocurrency market at the time. After its launch on October 8, 2011, the price remained relatively low with an average of around $3.
One of the main differences between Bitcoin and Litecoin concerns the total number of coins each cryptocurrency can produce.
Bitcoin offers its users a maximum of 21 million BTC, while Litecoin offers 84 million LTC. The number of coins in Litecoin system is four times bigger, as well as the speed of block processing.
Quite an important difference between Bitcoin and Litecoin is the hashing algorithm that everyone uses to solve the block, as well as the number of coins distributed each time a solution is found.
Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm, which is considered relatively more complex. Litecoin, on the other hand, instead of SHA256, uses Scrypt, developed by FreeBSD security officer Colin Percival, for mining. Initially this algorithm was created for online service Tarsnap, but it was perfect for the cryptocurrency, which largely determined Litecoin’s exchange rate forecast in the future
Is litecoin worth investing in?
In order to understand whether it is worth investing in such a volatile and quite controversial asset, let’s take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of the cryptocurrency.
First, let’s talk about the advantages. As mentioned above, compared to other cryptocurrencies, LightCoin has a high speed. Blockchain LTC processes a block in 2.5 minutes, while bitcoin takes 10 minutes to process each block. That is to note here, LTC’s fast transactional speeds.
Litecoin is open-source, which means that it can easily implement software changes and updates to respond to the changing market dynamics.
In terms of Litecoin transaction fees, relative to other cryptocurrencies, they are quite low. This makes LTC a great digital currency for payments. This is one of the main advantages that Litecoin offers in comparison to other cryptocurrencies.
Compared to bitcoin, Litecoin has a high capitalization in terms of total coins.
The speed of LTC transactions makes the system less vulnerable to hacking or use by attackers for malicious activities. There is only a small time window for hackers to launch any attack.
“Overall, in my subjective opinion, lightcoin has deflated quite a bit over the crypto-zine. It used to be in the 3-4th place in terms of capitalization, widely used among investors and traders as a convenient payment instrument with fast transactions. Now it barely stays in the top 10 cryptocurrencies.”
Indeed, Litecoin has been on the decline, and one of the main negative factors regarding Litecoin is that Litecoin creator Charlie Lee sold all of his tokens at their peak, when Litecoin was nearing a record high of $370. The reason for the sale, he said, was to get away from conflicts of interest and accusations of manipulating the cryptocurrency’s value.
According to many experts, miners are also skeptical about Litecoin’s growth potential.
Analyzing the three cryptocurrencies bitcoin, etherium and litecoin, one can say that the first two coins show a healthy commitment from the team to develop their projects. LightCoin does not boast the same large development team and does not enjoy updates as often as other coins. As a result, this undermines miners’ confidence in LTC’s fundamental prospects.
Despite this, most Western experts and crypto-enthusiasts are quite optimistic about the prospects of this cryptocurrency in the next 5-6 years