Litecoin (LTC) is a Cryptodivisa supported by the P2P network, and an open source software project published under the license MIT.1 Inspired and practically identical in its technical aspect to Bitcoin (BTC), the creation and transfer of Litecoin is based In an open-source cryptographic protocol that is not administered by any central authority.
Litecoin was thought to be an alternative electronic currency of Bitcoin and offers three main differences. First, the Litecoin network performs one block processing every 2.5 minutes instead of every 10 minutes, which allows faster transaction confirmation.
Second, the Litecoin network will produce approximately 4 times more units than Bitcoin, or about 84 million Litecoins.
Thirdly, Litecoin uses the scrypt function in its working test algorithm: a hard memory sequential function first conceived by Colin Percival, facilitating mining as it does not need sophisticated equipment like Bitcoin. Each litecoin is divided into 100,000,000 smaller units, defined by eight decimal places.
Litecoin transactions, balances and broadcasts are managed by a P2P network through scrypt, and its work test scheme, much like Bitcoin, (Litecoins are issued when a small enough hash value is found The case creates a block, and the process by which these hashes are found and create these blocks is called mining).
The emission rate forms a geometric series, and this rate is halved every 4 years (each, 840,000 blocks) reaching a final total of 84 million LTC. The intensive nature of scrypt memory means that, unlike Bitcoin, Litecoin’s production is memory-intensive which makes it suitable for GPU mining and makes it more costly to create implementations with FPGA or ASIC.11 Currently, Litecoins are traded as much for fiduciary money as for bitcoins, mostly for online transactions. Reversible transactions (such as credit card transactions) are not commonly used to buy litecoins, since transactions with Litecoin are irreversible, and therefore, there is a danger of repayments.
As of April 25, 2013, 1 LTC has an approximate value of USD 3.86 or 0.03 BTC which makes Litecoin the second largest electronic currency by market capitalization with a limit of 70,000,000 USD.
Your block explorer can be found at explorer.litecoin.net. The forum at litecointalk.org.
