Crypto Frontline

As it is with bitcoin, litecoin is another cryptocurrency that gets created through the process of mining. To begin with a brief history of litecoin, it was created in the year 2011 by Charles Lee, a former engineer at Google. One of the motivations behind the creation of litecoin was to offer an improved version of bitcoin.

What’s different in terms of the mining process?

First and foremost, it is worth to mention that litecoin uses a different proof-of-work than bitcoin. In the case of bitcoin we have the SHA-256 hashing algorithm, while in the case of litecoin we have the s-crypt, usually pronounced as “script”. It also incorporates the bitcoin hashing algorithm, but still, there are some subtle differences which we should mention.

Its calculations are much more serialized than those of bitcoins and it favors huge amounts of high-speed RAM, compared to raw processing power alone (as it is the case for bitcoin).

Because of that, s-crypt is also known as a “memory hard problem”. The hashing power for litecoin pales in comparison to bitcoin (in the case of bitcoin we have 20,000 Terra Hashes per second, while in the case of litecoin we have 95,643 Mega Hashes) which makes litecoin available for mining even with an ordinary PC with multiple graphics cards.

There had been a time when bitcoin mining was also possible via a PC, but that is not the case now.

To sum up, litecoin truly offers a lighter version of bitcoin, since the mining process does not require such a strong hardware.

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