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Even though Bitcoin has been one of the most popular since their first appearance, there are other cryptocurrencies, such as Litecoin that are showing signs of even more growth potential. Litecoin, although born through a modification in Bitcoin’s protocol, has a few considerable advantages over its bigger brother.

The Birth of Litecoin

First created in 2011, Litecoin was developed by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee who was also the engineering director of the popular US exchange platform, Coinbase. Even though it is clearly based on the Bitcoin model, Litecoin has made a few improvements that make it that much more effective than the original currency first proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008.

The validation process used for Bitcoin’s transactions can be slow when there is a lot of activity on the network. One of Litecoin’s major advantages is that it allows for faster transaction speeds. Its algorithm has an operation process that is about four times faster that of Bitcoin’s.

With Litecoin, it only takes 2.5 seconds to create a new block. Whereas for Bitcoin, this process can take upwards to a full 10 minutes.

One other way in which Litecoin has surpassed its brother is in the process of mining itself. Bitcoin mining requires special computers that are very expensive and consume vast amounts of energy. While mining for Litecoin can be done with almost any computer software.

What is Litecoin worth?

With nearly 84 million coins to its name, Litecoin has a much better liquidity than its predecessor. The birthchild of Charlie Lee, it has seen a 300% increase in just one month and 5.900% over the course of the year.

Right now, Litecoin is valued at around 286.62 Euros or $337.23 USD. It is also important to note that so far, both cryptocurrencies have followed the exact same trends. Meaning that when the value of Bitcoin goes up or down, it also influences Litecoin.

With time, it should be rather interesting to see if Litecoin can eventually evolve to no longer rely on Bitcoin for its value.

Clean energies

Now, Litecoin is just starting to emerge from the shadow of the best-known cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. While Bitcoin’s futures markets were being launched on the CBOE Futures Exchange in Chicago on Sunday, Litecoin was busy reaching new records. By Tuesday of this week, its value had risen to about $321 from its closing price of $148.66 on Sunday. That’s a 120% increase in only 48 hours.

Concerning transaction volumes, Litecoin is also taking huge leaps forward. Last Friday, December 8th, Litecoin had exceeded one billion transactions for the first time since September. In only one day, that number had risen to 1.5 billion and by December 12th, it had reached staggering 7.7 billion transactions.

All this has naturally started to fuel rumors. According to a report based on an anonymous source, it could be that two of Bitcoin’s biggest competitors, Ethereum and Litecoin, could soon have their own futures markets as well.

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