Litecoin

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Litecoin
logo
symbol LTC, Ł
Publishing year 2011
developer Charlie Lee
Blockchain 18 GB
Mining Scrypt
Website litecoin.org

Litecoin ( symbol : Ł ; abbreviation : LTC ) is a peer-to-peer - cryptocurrency , incorporated into an open source software project, which in turn under the MIT / X11 was released license.

history

Litecoin was on October 7, 2011 on the open-source - Client Litecoin Core by Charlie Lee on GitHub released.

description

Technically, the Litecoin system is implemented almost identically to the Bitcoin system. The creation and transmission of Litecoins is based on an open source encryption protocol and is therefore not centrally controlled.

A peer-to-peer network similar to that of Bitcoin manages all transactions, balances and expenses. Litecoins are created by generating blocks based on a cryptological hash function . This process of “finding” a hash is called mining . The rate at which Litecoins are generated forms a geometric series and halves every four years until a predefined total amount of Litecoins is reached (protection against inflation ). Like Bitcoins, Litecoins can be generated individually on just one computer, for one person or distributed on several systems that belong to several people in so-called pools .

Like a Bitcoin, each Litecoin can be broken down into 100,000,000 smaller units.

Litecoins can be exchanged for both fiat money and bitcoins, which is usually done via online exchanges (digital currency exchangers).

Back Bookable transactions (such as transactions via credit card ) are rarely used to buy Litecoins because transactions are irreversible with Litecoins and thus the risk of undesired reversal, known as chargebacks , there.

Differences from Bitcoin

Litecoin was developed as an alternative cryptocurrency to Bitcoin and differs from it in at least three ways:

  • Blocks are generated in the Litecoin network every 2.5 minutes instead of every 10 minutes, which leads to faster transaction confirmations for clients.
  • The Litecoin network therefore also produces four times as many units as the Bitcoin network over the entire course, whereby the number of Litecoins converges to 84 million .
  • In contrast to Bitcoin, for which SHA256 is used, Litecoin uses scrypt in its proof-of-work algorithm: a special sequential function, devised and described by Colin Percival. With the aim of distributing the mining evenly among many people and to prevent centralization like the currency Bitcoin, an algorithm was selected that is tailored to PCs (CPU and GPU-optimized). A (much faster) implementation in ASICs, which are specially produced for this application, should, however, be prevented in order to make mining less dependent on financial strength. Scrypt was specially developed to make brute force attacks with specialized hardware such as FPGAs and ASICs more difficult. It uses the fact that RAM is relatively expensive. For this reason, scrypt was intentionally designed to be very memory-intensive. Therefore, for the mining of Litecoins graphics processors (GPUs), which u. a. are designed for handling textures and other larger data sets or have access to the main memory of the CPU, and it is comparatively expensive to implement devices with FPGAs or ASICs successfully. However, ASIC-based miners have been around for some time that achieve hashrates comparable to GPUs - but with a fraction of the power consumption of graphics cards.

Course development

On February 3, 2014, 1 LTC was equal to approximately $ 21.50 or BTC 0.028.

On August 20, 2014 (roughly six months later), 1 LTC had dropped to approximately $ 4.77 (78% depreciation). Litecoin was still the fifth largest cryptocurrency, but the market capitalization value dropped about 73% to $ 150,000,000. Litecoin, like Bitcoin, experienced a high loss of value.

Since the beginning of 2017, the price has risen sharply to around USD 50 in June 2017 and to over USD 300 in December 2017. After that, however, the value fell sharply again and was around USD 43 in November 2018.

In terms of market capitalization , Litecoin is the fourth largest cryptocurrency at $ 3.61 billion (as of March 22, 2019).

Trivia

  • Just like Bitcoin, Litecoin’s Genesis Block also includes a newspaper headline. In contrast to Bitcoin, however, from the New York Times on October 5th. It deals with the death of Steve Jobs , who passed away that day.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Litecoin.org . In: Litecoin.org, April 2013 . Litecoin.org. Retrieved April 24, 2013.
  2. ↑ Search Results: Litecoin . Abe Search. Retrieved October 20, 2012.
  3. ↑ 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
  4. ↑ Nakamoto Satoshi: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System (PDF; 184 kB) Bitcoin.org. Retrieved April 24, 2013.
  5. ↑ http://www.andykellett.com/discography/litecoin-miner-status/ , Litecoin Miner Status, October 21, 2012
  6. ↑ http://www.openwall.com/lists/crypt-dev/2012/09/02/1 , using scrypt for user authentication, October 21, 2012
  7. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated November 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Comparison of online payment methods, October 21, 2012  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blockchain.info
  8. ↑ a b LTC / USD . BTC-E. Archived from the original on April 24, 2013. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 25, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / btc-e.com
  9. ↑ Shawn Powers: Cryptocurrency: Your Total Cost Is 01001010010 (PDF; 7.6 MB) In: Linux Journal, March 2012 . Linux Journal. Retrieved October 21, 2012.
  10. ↑ BATR: Bitcoins Risk Reward . Retrieved April 24, 2013.
  11. ↑ Tom Simonite: Bitcoin Isn't the Only Cryptocurrency in Town . Retrieved April 24, 2013.
  12. ↑ a b c d Litecoin . Bitcoin-Einfach.de. Archived from the original on January 16, 2014. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 16, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bitcoin-einfach.de
  13. ↑ Colin Percival: Stronger Key Derivation Via Sequential Memory-Hard Functions (PDF; 207 kB) Accessed April 24, 2013.
  14. ↑ Comparison between Litecoin and Bitcoin Mining ( Memento of the original from July 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / litecoin.info
  15. ↑ Alex Coventry: Nooshare (PDF; 314 kB) MIT. Accessed October 21, 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."
  16. ↑ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3963183 , Hacker News, Also, why not mine litecoins, October 21, 2012
  17. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Raspberry Pi : Litecoin GPU & CPU Miner, October 21, 2012  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / litebit.co
  18. ↑ 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 ?, October 21, 2012
  19. ↑ Scrypt ASIC Race Intensifies, KnCMiner Scores $ 2 Million in Preorders. In: Coindesk. September 10, 2014, accessed February 20, 2020 .
  20. ↑ BTC / LTC . Vircurex. Archived from the original on May 8, 2013. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 15, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / vircurex.com
  21. ^ Litecoin (LTC) price, charts, and info . coinmarketcap.de. Retrieved August 20, 2014.
  22. ↑ Litecon-euro exchange rate. finanzen.net GmbH, accessed on October 26, 2017 .
  23. ^ Litecoin (LTC) price, charts, market cap, and other metrics | CryptoCurrency Market Capitalizations. Retrieved June 18, 2017 .
  24. ↑ http://www.finanzen.net/devisen/litecoin-dollar-kurs
  25. ↑ Litecoin dollar | LTC / USD | Exchange rate | current course | finanzen.net . In: finanzen.net . ( finanzen.net [accessed November 15, 2018]).
  26. ↑ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/litecoin/
  27. ^ Litecoin source tree. Contribute to litecoin-project / litecoin development by creating an account on GitHub. Litecoin Project, June 7, 2019, accessed June 7, 2019 .