Cons and Pros of Litecoin

Litecoin, the world’s first altcoin, has been making its presence felt in the crypto market for a while now. If you are new to the phenomenon that this coin is, then you should definitely go through a beginner’s guide to Litecoin to understand what vision guides it and what history it is a product of. Like all other good things, Litecoin too has a few cons to offset its numerous pros. Let’s have a look at the cons and pros of Litecoin.

What is Litecoin?

Litecoin is a digital currency that came into being as a fork of the Bitcoin Core Client to serve as a faster, lighter and cheaper supplementary coin to the original BTC. Introduced by ex-employee of Google, Mr. Charlie Lee, in 2011, Litecoin has managed to find a place of pride in every crypto investors considerations.

Pros of Litecoin (LTC)

There are many reasons to invest in Litecoin and the pros of this cryptocurrency only serve to enhance them. Let’s have a look at all the things that give Litecoin a competitive edge in the crypto market.

1. Litecoin is Open Sourced:

As Litecoin is a fork of the open source BTC Core Client, it is naturally an open sourced system that can easily implement software updates and changes to respond to changing needs of the market. Its flexibility has made it possible to embrace the new SegWit system and move towards the adoption of the Lightning Network (LN) technology as well.

2. Litecoin is Speedy:

Compared to Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency it was meant to be drawing from and improving upon, Litecoin is incredibly fast. It processes transactions within 2.5 minutes each while Bitcoin takes 10 minutes.

3. Litecoin has Low Transaction Fees:

Litecoin also has a rather low transaction fee which makes it a great cryptocurrency to adopt and work with. This is an obvious advantage Litecoin provides over Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies.

4. A High Upper Limit in Number of Total Coins:

While it retains the quality of Bitcoin that makes it a limited-supply coin, it raises Bitcoin’s 21 million limit by a large number, thereby making sure there’s plenty to mine and invest in. The upper limit for Litecoin is 84 million.

5. Enhanced Security in Litecoin:

The faster transaction processing makes the system less susceptible to attacks as hackers get a very little time-window to attempt a double spending attack.

Cons of Litecoin :

Litecoins also have several cons that even out the great advantages it is usually known to offer.

1. Fast Decline of its Uniqueness:

What initially made Litecoins so amazing was the fact that it tried to improve upon Bitcoin in a number of ways. While it is still holding fort in terms of efficiency and speed, the SegWit update has been embraced by Bitcoin as well, thereby chipping away at one of its USPs.

2. Faltering Credibility:

The fact that Charlie Lee, a respected name in the industry, was behind Litecoin had played a huge role in its burgeoning popularity. However, when he sold all his LTC holdings in December last year citing a conflict if interest, his faith in the coin was called to question. Moreover, the withdrawal of the Litepay service (similar to Bitpay) that had already been announced and had been met with great enthusiasm, also affected the credibility of Litecoin.

While Litecoin’s many pros make it a great candidate for investment, if the cons have disappointed you and are forcing you to consider other options, you should definitely check out our list of cryptocurrencies you should invest in, in 2018, to find out about trendy and promising coins including but not limited to Litecoin.