What is Litecoin and how does it work?

“Litecoin is the second-oldest cryptocurrency, forked from the Bitcoin protocol in 2011,” says Jay Blaskey, digital currency specialist at BitIRA. “It was engineered to be used for fast, secure and low-cost payments.” Think of it as a Bitcoin spinoff. The goal in launching Litecoin was to improve on Bitcoin in a few different ways.

How many Litecoins are there?

There will ultimately be only 84 million litecoins in circulation and not one more. Every 2.5 minutes (as opposed to 10 minutes for bitcoin), the litecoin network generates a what is called a block – a ledger entry of recent litecoin transactions throughout the world. And here is where litecoin’s inherent value derives.

What is Litecoin blockchain?

Litecoin Blockchain It is a decentralized peer-to-peer cash system which removes the need for a 3rd party to carry out a transaction. Just like Bitcoin, Litecoin has a Proof of Work consensus protocol and its hashing algorithm is called Scrypt.

What is the reward for mining Litecoin?

Mining Reward. Miners are currently awarded with 25 new litecoins per block, an amount which gets halved roughly every 4 years (every 840,000 blocks). The Litecoin network is therefore scheduled to produce 84 million litecoins, which is 4 times as many currency units as Bitcoin.