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Reasons Why Litecoin Is Better Than Bitcoin

Bitcoin is out, Litecoin is in. Here's ten good reasons why Litecoin is better than Bitcoin in every way.

By Cato ConroyPublished 6 years ago 5 min read
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Bitcoin has been skyrocketing in price, and more people than ever before have started to have Bitcoin wallets as a result. But it's not exactly a sterling investment. Many experts believe that Bitcoin is flawed, and truthfully, there are a lot of downsides to buying Bitcoin most hype-believers won't want to admit to.

But, before you eschew cryptocurrencies altogether, you need to know there's a better alternative to Bitcoin: Litecoin. Often called the "silver to Bitcoin's gold," Litecoin is quickly becoming a serious force to be reckoned with.

Here are ten reasons why Litecoin is better than Bitcoin, according to users and experts alike.

It's cheaper than Bitcoin.

A single Bitcoin now rests around $10,000 in price, and that's not including the transaction fees you'll probably have to eat at an exchange. Sure, you can buy fractions of a Bitcoin, but still, the fees alone have gotten to be a serious pain in the behind.

Litecoin is cheaper because there are four times as many Litecoins as there are Bitcoins, and also has lower transaction fees. So, for beginners, it's a way easier point of entry. That alone offers plenty of reasons why Litecoin is better than Bitcoin for newbies.

There's also a higher potential for Litecoin than Bitcoin, judging by numbers alone.

Many people are worried that the Bitcoin bubble is about to burst, and realistically, it'd be very difficult for the total market value of Bitcoin to continue to increase at the rate it has. To do so, Bitcoin's value would have to increase from around $280 billion to $560 billion in the same time frame.

Since Litecoin has a smaller market, it's got a lot more opportunity to double or even triple in size. Additionally, investors are already looking for the next Bitcoin, so who's to say that the general consensus won't end up being that Litecoin is it?

Litecoin's Charlie Lee is totally dedicated to the project, while Bitcoin doesn't really have anyone who's that heavy into it.

One of the more human reasons why Litecoin is better than Bitcoin is because it has someone who is totally into its creation. Charlie Lee, a former employee of Google/Alphabet, has worked at the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase for years.

He recently quit his main job to start promoting Litecoin.

As of right now, he's fully dedicated to bringing Litecoin to exchanges and marketplaces. Meanwhile, Bitcoin doesn't have that—and thus offers no impetus for people to adopt it. That makes Lee's promotion a huge advantage for Litecoin.

The speculation investing in Bitcoin may have made the market capitalization bloated.

All the speculation Bitcoin has been getting from investors is affecting its price. That means that it may be selling at peak, and that the value of Bitcoin is probably not really as high as what people are paying for it. This puts Bitcoin at risk of a crash.

Litecoin has far fewer speculators, which means that will not be as likely to have a major crash due to speculation investing follies. When you pair that with the fact that the law of big numbers, it suggests that there's ample room for growth.

Litecoin has the SegWit upgrade, and Bitcoin doesn't.

On a tech side, one of the best reasons why Litecoin is better than Bitcoin is its design. Litecoin has the SegWit upgrade, which is a coding feature that Mr. Lee designed. This blockchain coding feature boosted the capacity of the blockchain—all while lowering transaction costs and increasing the speed of a single transaction.

This means that Litecoin's design is better suited to large volumes of transactions. For users, that means Litecoin provides a better and more affordable transaction experience than Bitcoin does.

Making transactions much faster would have made Bitcoin's value worth it; however, Bitcoin simply doesn't have what it takes in that sense. That's why people are complaining.

Litecoin's proof-of-work algorithm is better.

Bitcoin and Litecoin have very different proof-of-work algorithms that go into their transactions. Bitcoin's algorithm is very processor-intensive, while Litecoin's is memory-intensive.

The thing is, the cost of Bitcoin mining equipment is getting to be very expensive because it. Memory upgrades are cheap, which makes Litecoin way easier to mine—and much more profitable for those who want to mine it.

A faster block-processing rate is another good reason to love Litecoin.

This goes back to Lee's upgrade he gave to Litecoin. Bitcoin takes a very long time to process blocks of data, and the amount of time continues to increase. Litecoin processes blocks every 2.5 minutes—which is way faster than Bitcoin's 300-minute sequences.

A reward every 2.5 minutes? That's plenty of reasons why Litecoin is better than Bitcoin for miners and users alike.

Bitcoin was an experiment.

Here's the kicker—Bitcoin was never really meant to be as big as it is now. That means that one of the reasons why Litecoin is better than Bitcoin is the fact that Bitcoin was supposed to be the flawed version of the final product in theory.

Bitcoin is an experiment. Experiments can fail. So, don't be shocked if a fatal flaw in Bitcoin causes a crash. This is the primary reason why people call Bitcoin one of the biggest bubbles in human history.

Litecoin was developed later, and that means that there's a better chance to come up with a safeguard against failure.

A lot of experts are also saying Litecoin is undervalued, and that could make it a better investment in the long term.

One of the reasons why Litecoin is better the Bitcoin for investors is because it's showing a lot more bang for its buck. It's got a better system in place, more safeguards, lower fees, and a more high-volume friendly design.

Meanwhile, the biggest pull Bitcoin has is its buzz. It takes a long time and a lot of money to mine, and frankly, people are right to think of it as a bubble.

When you look at the facts, Litecoin is a better bargain—and chances are that it is undervalued right now because of how much thunder Bitcoin has been stealing. So, it'd make sense to invest in Litecoin before the Bitcoin speculators take full notice of it.

Lastly, it's getting increasingly difficult to mine Bitcoin—and that could mean miners could drop out en masse.

We've already explained that most of the Bitcoin mining gear is getting too expensive for regular joes to turn a profit from it. Bitcoin is poised to lower the amount it pays miners soon, too. Simply put, it's really hard to mine Bitcoin professionally and turn a profit.

Litecoin is cheaper and faster to mine, which means it'll be less likely to get to the point that Bitcoin is at.

No miners means that transactions will not work out with Bitcoin. A Bitcoin mining exodus would mean the currency would self-annihilate. So, one of the more far-future reasons why Litecoin is better that Bitcoin is the fact that it's less likely to have a miner exodus happen.

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About the Creator

Cato Conroy

Cato Conroy is a Manhattan-based writer who yearns for a better world. He loves to write about politics, news reports, and interesting innovations that will impact the way we live.

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