The Little Engine That Could – Litecoin Breaks $100, Outperforming Bitcoin in 2017

Where Bitcoin goes, do altcoins follow? It would seem so for Litecoin, whose price rose yesterday in tandem with Bitcoin, reaching an all-time high of $102.21.

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With Bitcoin’s history-making move yesterday as it passed the $10,000 mark, it is easy to get caught up in the excitement and celebration and forget about the achievements of other cryptocurrencies. Litecoin – often thought of as silver to Bitcoin’s gold – is a prime example. As Bitcoin climbed its way into $10k territory, Litecoin was experiencing record-setting growth as well, rising from $85.91 on the morning of 27 November to an all-time high of $102.21 early on 29 November.

And now LTC $100!!! https://t.co/TIXF9M8Rp4

— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) November 29, 2017

Litecoin’s growth, in terms of percentage, has actually outpaced that of Bitcoin. If you look at the performance of both digital currencies from 29 November 2016 until today, Bitcoin experienced gains of approximately 1406.17% compared to Litecoin’s 2541.08%. A lot of Litecoin’s thunder (and also possibly Lightning) has been stolen recently too by an increasing number of Bitcoin forks, which, if nothing else have provided a form of dividend payment to Bitcoin holders who are now able to sell them or exchange for more Bitcoin.

Why Litecoin Matters

 

One of the main differentiating factors for Litecoin is that it can handle higher volumes of transactions due to its code having faster block generation. This means a Litecoin transaction takes just 5 mins compared to Bitcoin’s 10 minutes. This speed benefit may still be true, and underutilized by consumers, but the main focus for Litecoin now is its ability to do off-chain atomic swaps with Bitcoin as part of the Lightning Network enabled by both coins having adopted SegWit. The first Bitcoin-to-Litecoin atomic swap was achieved earlier this month, sparking much excitement within the crypto community.

The news is incredibly bullish for the future of both coins, solving many of the issues the coins currently face such as transaction speed and cost. Charlie Lee, Litecoin’s creator nicely summed up the potential of the Lightning Network:

Think of it being two highways: Today, Bitcoin is packed full of cars and Litecoin is empty. Even with Bitcoin packed, the cars are not coming to use the Litecoin highway today because it’s not connected and it’s inconvenient (centralized exchanges and slow on-chain transfers) to go across. LN will build bridges over the highways.

Litecoin’s History

Litecoin was created By Charlie Lee in 2011 as a Bitcoin clone that he wanted to see become the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. Litecoin used much of the same code as Bitcoin, initially created with an eye toward catering to graphics card miners, using a different hashing algorithm than that of Bitcoin. Instead of Bitcoin’s SHA-256, Litecoin uses Scrypt for mining. It was not long until dedicated mining ASIC’s also began mining Litecoin which, like Bitcoin, ended the decentralized ideals it initially had. The price of the coin has traditionally been a lot more stable than that of Bitcoin, something which may have caused the coin to avoid much of the media attention focused on it’s larger brother. The coin’s percentage gains, however, have been significant, easily outpacing Bitcoin’s despite its lower value.

Litecoin’s creator Charlie Lee is a vocal advocate in the cryptocurrency space, providing contributions to both Bitcoin and Litecoin code. He maintains a concerted effort not to overshadow Bitcoin, but rather to work with it. Even in the shadow of Bitcoin, Litecoin’s future looks bright.

Do you hold Litecoin? Why should people be buying it? Let us know in the comments below.

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Images courtesy of Coinmarketcap, Pixabay, Bitcoinist Archives

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