Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin is often referred to as “Bitcoins little brother”, or “if Bitcoin is gold, Litecoin is silver.” In other words, Litecoin is another cryptocurrency which follows a very similar protocol and methodology as Bitcoin. They are both peer to peer cryptocurrencies, and operate on the same underlying blockchain technology. As well, Litecoin is one of the first cryptocurrencies to come out after Bitcoin. However, even though the two cryptocurrencies share many similarities, they also differ in some subtle but important ways. For instance, Litecoin’s transaction speed is much faster than Bitcoin, and it can process a much higher number of transactions in the same time frame because it generates blocks 4 times faster than Bitcoin can. Another big difference between the two is the maximum supply of coins. Litecoin will reach their maximum supply once 84 million coins are mined, Bitcoin will max out at 21 million coins.
Litecoin has a much larger supply than Bitcoin, therefore the price reflects this by costing significantly less. Nevertheless, it continues to rise along with the price of it’s bigger brother, and one day could be worth as much as Bitcoin is today. With that said, there are many people interested in buying and trading this cryptocurrency. Litecoin has been around along time (in the cryptocurrency space) and continues to prosper, thus it has broken into many marketplaces along with Bitcoin.
Litecoin Chart
The current live price of LTC/USD:
How to Trade Litecoin
The trading of Litecoin can be commenced in a couple of ways.
The first method is to actually buy and sell Litecoin for fiat money or other cryptocurrencies. Thanks to Litecoin’s close ties and relationship with Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency can often be found on exchanges and brokerages who offer the purchasing and trading of Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin still outnumbers the available places to buy Litecoin by a longshot. The most popular places to buy and trade Litecoin are cryptocurrency exchanges, rather than small time cryptocurrency brokerages who only sell one to three types of cryptocurrencies.
So, the best way to trade Litecoin is to sign up with an exchange who offers Litecoin for buying and exchanging. The best exchanges to do this on, are the ones with the most volume, as they are highly liquid and offer the best prices for buying and selling Litecoin. Also, on larger exchanges, traders have more cryptocurrency assets available for them to trade in addition to trading Litecoin.
An important thing to know about trading Litecoin is that it does not have nearly as many exchangeable assets as Bitcoin or Ethereum do. For the most part, Litecoin can only be traded for fiat currency, Bitcoin, or Ethereum. It is highly unlikely that you can exchange Litecoin for other cryptocurrencies than the ones mentioned earlier. However, there are blockchain technologies coming out soon that will allow traders to exchange cryptocurrencies like Litecoin for other cryptocurrencies. Until then, traders will need to exchange their Litecoin for Ethereum or Bitcoin before buying other cryptocurrencies.
CFD Trading with Litecoin
Second, a method which was more recently introduced in the cryptocurrency space is trading via CFDs (Contract for Difference). This method is of particular interest to traders who do not wish to buy Litecoin, but would rather speculate on what the price is going to be. This method allows investors to only put down a portion of the value of Litecoin and speculate on how much and in what direction the price will move over a given amount of time.