While there are many similarities between bitcoin and litecoin, some of the subtle differences include:
TRANSACTION SPEED
While litecoin requires more sophisticated technology to mine than bitcoin, blocks are actually generated up to four times faster. Litecoin also processes financial transactions a lot quicker, and can also process a higher number of them over the same time period.
NUMBER OF COINS
Both bitcoin and litecoin have a finite number of coins in circulation. Bitcoin has 21 million coins available, while litecoin has 84 million available – four times more than bitcoin.
MARKET CAP
Litecoin has a much smaller market cap than bitcoin, but is still one of the most traded cryptocurrencies.
ALGORITHMS
Miners must successfully solve hash functions in order to add new blocks of a cryptocurrency to the blockchain. Litecoin and bitcoin use different mining algorithms, with Scrypt being the hash function used for litecoin, and SHA-256 the hash function used for bitcoin. Scrypt was initially chosen by the litecoin development team to avoid mining being dominated by ASIC-based miners. This would allow CPU and GPU-based miners to compete. The Scrypt mining algorithm is more memory intensive, and this was initially less suited to ASIC miners, giving other miners more opportunity. However, Scrypt-capable ASIC-based miners have developed over time. This means CPU and GPU-based miners no longer have valid mining tools due to the inferior computational powers, and ASICs are able to generate far more hashes per second.
TRANSACTION SPEED
While litecoin requires more sophisticated technology to mine than bitcoin, blocks are actually generated up to four times faster. Litecoin also processes financial transactions a lot quicker, and can also process a higher number of them over the same time period.
NUMBER OF COINS
Both bitcoin and litecoin have a finite number of coins in circulation. Bitcoin has 21 million coins available, while litecoin has 84 million available – four times more than bitcoin.
MARKET CAP
Litecoin has a much smaller market cap than bitcoin, but is still one of the most traded cryptocurrencies.
ALGORITHMS
Miners must successfully solve hash functions in order to add new blocks of a cryptocurrency to the blockchain. Litecoin and bitcoin use different mining algorithms, with Scrypt being the hash function used for litecoin, and SHA-256 the hash function used for bitcoin. Scrypt was initially chosen by the litecoin development team to avoid mining being dominated by ASIC-based miners. This would allow CPU and GPU-based miners to compete. The Scrypt mining algorithm is more memory intensive, and this was initially less suited to ASIC miners, giving other miners more opportunity. However, Scrypt-capable ASIC-based miners have developed over time. This means CPU and GPU-based miners no longer have valid mining tools due to the inferior computational powers, and ASICs are able to generate far more hashes per second.