Bitcoin-Qt wallet location OSX / Dogecoin hashrate wallet

Litecoin is an alternative cryptocurrency to Bitcoin and the second largest (by market cap) of all the alt coins . If you’re completely new to the cryptocurrency world then please take a look What is Bitcoin? first.

Bitcoin is open source,which means it can be used and modified by anyone to create other cryptocurrencies. Many other cryptocurrencies have since been launched with Litecoin being one of them.

Litecoin was created by Charles Lee in 2011. Charles describes Litecoin as being “more abundant & lightweight and as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold”. Technically Litecoin is very similar to Bitcoin but has several key differences,see below.

Key Differences Between Litecoin & Bitcoin

	Bitcoin	Litecoin
Date Created	3-Jan-2009	7-Oct-2011
Created By	Satoshi Nakamoto	Charles Lee
Coin Cap	21 Million	84 Million
Algorithm	SHA-256	Scrypt
Block Time	10 Mins	2.5 Mins
Difficulty Adjustment	Every 2016 blocks
Initial Reward	50 BTC	50 LTC
Current Reward	25 BTC
Block Reward Halved	Every 210, 000 blocks	Every 840, 000 blocks
Block Explorer
Transaction Fee	0.0001 BTC	0.02 LTC

Advantages

Litecoin can confirm transactions faster than Bitcoin,this makes it attractive to merchants and recipients as there is less time to wait for payments.
Litecoin can handle a higher volume of transactions due to the faster block time.
Faster block times also reduces the risk of double-spending.
Mining is accessible to more people because Litecoin uses a different Proof Of Work hashing algorithm. Bitcoin uses SHA-256 whilst Litecoin uses Scrypt. SHA-256 favours raw processing power,whilst Scrypt favours memory – this basically means that custom made ASIC and FPGA hardware,which is now used for Bitcoin mining,has no advantage for Litecoin mining. This allows mining to be performed with powerful graphic cards rather than super expensive custom made hardware.