Bitcoin Forum

What is the difference between one and the other? After all, litecoinis a fork of bitcoin, which means it is an improved version of it.

First, forking doesn't necessarily means improving. Literally anyone with a basic knowledge of how to use a computer can fork Bitcoin.

Second, an alternative currency would have to improve very substantially over Bitcoin to overtake it. A small incremental improvement would not be enough to overtake Bitcoin, there is just too much inertia and work involved. Perhaps a very major improvement could  but even then, the Bitcoin community might just adopt the technology and apply it to Bitcoin without adopting the alternative currency.

Litecoin only had a very minor change compared to Bitcoin (the proof-of-work algorithm) and it's not a change that makes it strictly better, the change is really more akin to a trade off rather than a strict improvement. And that's why it never overtook Bitcoin.

You are right that Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin, the second fork, to be precise, the first was namecoin (https://www.namecoin.org/).
However the creator of the LTC says that the goal was to study blockchain technology and not a trivial copying of Bitcoin.

In addition, there are a number of significant differences that are expressed in the following:

• Different security algorithms.
  Litecoin uses a scrypt encryption method while bitcoin SHA-256. In view of this, mining LTC is cheaper and more affordable.
  In addition, it is possible to use the CPU for mining, although it will be almost not effective.
• Faster transaction confirmation time.
  In the LTC network, the block is on average every 2.5 minutes, which is much faster than the BTC ~ 10 minutes.
  However, a 51% attack in the LTC network is significantly cheaper than in the BTC network.
• The difficulty in the LTC network changes more often,
  The difficulty changes every 2016 blocks as in the BTC network, however, due to the fact that the blocks are 4 times more frequent, this speeds up the change.
  Which leads to its change difficulty approximately every 3.5 days.
• LTC has a maximum number of coins 4 times larger than Bitcoin
  84,000,000.

What do we have in the end?
LTC is an excellent alternative cryptocurrency asset with a number of advantages, but it also has the disadvantages of its blockchain.

Litecoin is pretty much the testing grounds or a "lab rat" for Bitcoin; which mean Litecoin will of course, mostly going to be first with implementations. One notable example being SegWit. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's an "improved" version. Heck Litecoin has been having lack of development since last year, which has been openly admitted by Charlie Lee: https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/co6y9g/ltc_foundation_chat_leaked_no_evidence_of/

scrypt is not an encryption method, it is a key derivation function and it is used as a hashing algorithm similar to SHA256 in litecoin.
as for mining, just like bitcoin you need ASICs to mine LTC but different types of ASICs designed to compute scrypt's result.

susceptibility to 51% attack is due to lower LTC hashrate. the problem that comes from faster blocks is
1. bigger blockchain even with a lot less usage
2. more orphan rate which requires merchants to seek higher number of confirmation that nullifies the "it is faster than bitcoin" statement.
3. a lot more work by nodes to upload/download and verify blocks per day.

That sounds like from a person who's brainwashed by "someone" who said: "this 'forked coin' is an upgrade".

For the record, being a fork of another repository doesn't mean it's an improved version (fork-a-repo (https://help.github.com/en/github/getting-started-with-github/fork-a-repo)).
It's basically a copy of the original with different future developments and alterations.

The fact you are telling something it doesn't make it true. The reality has already proven that Litecoin is not actually better than Bitcoin.
You should read more and you should cross check what others tell you. Beware, many tell online what suits them best, not actually the truth. Trust no one.

Let me ask you this, why do we need this fork litecoin if we already have bitcoin? 21M bitcoin supply VS 84M Supply of litecoin. A times 4 of the total supply of bitcoin. I prefer bitcoin.
I have found an image on google comparing Litecoin to bitcoin I know it is not updated but there is only small difference. I don't know what is litecoin doing on their blockchain now.

[Source] - https://seekingalpha.com/article/4128643-litecoin-versus-bitcoin

https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2017/11/29/2312271-1511971085402607_origin.png

I don't like litecoin either and I think it's a hugely bad idea to invest money in it, but hey, at least we have a live working platform that's actually being used(not that much, but still being used) to try out stuff before the devs implement stuff to the Bitcoin main chain. :P It's just like safety testing products on some lab rats before using them on humans!

You could always try to share how Litecoin is better than Bitcoin but that isn't going to do anything impactful towards the overall usability and practical applications of the coin itself. Sure you could say things like

• Average transaction Time is faster
• Higher reward block
• More supply

just like the post by LbtalkL, but it doesn't change the fact that people are using BTC more and it's the main cryptocurrency used to buy other cryptocurrencies. I doubt it's going to change anytime soon.

The capacity of the whole application of a coin is the decision of the many. If everyone got used to Bitcoin being used, so be it but it's not going to change instantly. It's like you trying to introduce digital payments and still, there are cash payments going around. It's not going to be entirely used unless the majority uses it.

I bet most people here use Litecoin and the gang only for saving fees when they withdraw from exchanges. Other than that, it's just another altcoin for an experiment.

Welcome to capitalism.

Just like how we have lots of coins in the market, there are supporters of both LTC and BTC. Even with different blockchains and algorithms, both are just there mainly for profit :D

No, you got one thing wrong. Fork doesnt mean its improved anything, its changed.
In this particular case, litecoin just copied Bitcoin like literrally ctrl +c, ctrl + v and changed name, changed supply limit and block discovery average time. Thats it. Couple hours of work. Nothing improved, nothing valuable added, it was first bitcoin copy, thats it.

Total nodes for bitcoin- 10086
Total nodes for litecoin- 1554

Which one do you think more decentralized? If you are counting the features only, why not XMR is the best? It has "privacy by default.". There are a lot of coins which can be considered as improved version. Do a little more background research. You'll get the difference.

If we were to always move towards "the better one" and leave the previous coins behind, we'd go through some nonsense. Litecoin and other alts are out there for the people who want the specific features of them. Just like BCH has forked off BTC's chain with a few different characteristics, there are other alts that provide what a part of the community needs.

For example, we have Monero with it's privacy focus. Well, those who need privacy and complete anonymity (if they use it the right way, obviously), then they'll move to XMR. If they want transparency and to support the king of all cryptos which is the most adopted and the widest accepted, they'll keep supporting & using BTC.

Some people are going to stay only in the BTC community because they consider all other coins to be crap and think they shouldn't exist at all. This is the beauty of decentralization: everyone is free to think whatever they will and want, everyone is free to be part of whatever group and community they want to support. :)

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Not a Charlie Lee fanboy, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case when it comes to LTC. It was not just a copy-paste of BTC's code and they added quite a lot in time. I am not up to date with all recent changes, but there are enough devs out there working hard on making it better.

Moreover, it was not the first altcoin! IIRC, the first one after BTC was Namecoin..

Ain't nothing wrong with that, this is how freedom looks like - ideas competing on an open market and some people even manage to make money from that. If we lived under socialism, crypto would be banned and hodlers would be prosecuted, so all crypto activity would be forced into the underground.

There's a lot of bad altcoins, but we don't need government to tell us which coin to use and which to avoid, the market will figure it out eventually.

Exactly. Well, 2018 has been such a year that we saw lots of shit, or alts die off. :D

Litecoin processes the transaction much faster than BTC because of its large block size. But bitcoin is the most popular crypto in this industry.BTC is the trustable and old cryptocurrency. Also, it has a faster supply than other crypto. You can keep BTC as a long term value coin over litecoin. Thus BTC is mined before we can predict the coin's price like gold.

I don't think investing in Litecoin is a bad idea, maybe LTC is not comparable to BTC but it also has its own strengths.
LTC has more numbers than BTC
LTC has a higher transaction speed than BTC
Currently LTC is still in the top 10 largest currencies in the market, so LTC is still a worthwhile investment.

I don't think we should criticize Litecoin or any other coin which is clearly not a scam (such as ethereum for example), but an interesting attempt to try new possibilities in the blockchain technology.


Exactly that. Bitcoin gotta be more conservative than all other cryptocurrency projects.

Let altcoins tries faster blocktimes, try segwit, try smartcontracts, etc. If they have problems, they can just vanish and the community learn from their experiencies.

If they succeed, well, that new tech can just be implemented in bitcoin.

Not sure about you, but I'd rather invest everything in the solid final product than the experimental lab rat where a lot more things can fail.

Doesn't matter. XRP has a total supply of 44 billion vs LTC's 64 million. Definitely doesn't make XRP a better investment.

Doesn't matter. Higher transaction speed in sacrifice of security and decentralization. If transaction speed was the reason why I'd invest in a cryptocurrency, I'd be using and investing in PayPal instead.

So is XRP, so is BCH, so is BSV, so is EOS. Market cap ranking doesn't matter that much as it's mostly an inaccurate statistic in the first place.

Litecoin could be seen as a "middle" between the security of Bitcoin and some more speed though. Doesn't make it bad, but good for a niche of people that don't want to wait 10 minutes for a confirmation, but also don't want to use Paypal for instant transactions.

Yes of course it's definitely a decent sort of "in-and-out" choice whereas you'd just use it for a transaction and immediately convert it to BTC. But unless you're just going to send/withdraw from exchanges, you could barely find anyone using litecoin.

unfortunately in altcoin market these things don't matter at all. the only thing that matters is the short term pumping power that any altcoin has, if that power is strong enough (meaning if it can get pumped big enough) then it becomes a viable short term investment during that pump. that is why centralized shitcoins continue to exist in this market.

I do not deny that BTC is a better currency than most other coins including LTC.
However, investing in LTC is also not a bad choice, LTC has good growth in the market and it promises to bring a lot of profits.
Of course, everyone has their own choice, good luck with your investment decision.

Enlighten us here. Besides heavy bagholders on Reddit r/litecoin, who is actually promising that Litecoin will bring you a lot of profit? Because I think you shouldn't believe whoever said that.