Litecoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency created by Charlie Lee. It was created based on the Bitcoin protocol but differs in terms of the hashing algorithm used. Litecoin uses the memory intensive Scrypt proof of work mining algorithm. Scrypt allows consumer-grade hardware such as GPU to mine those coins. Why Litecoin? Litecoin is a cryptocurrency that has evolved from Bitcoin after its own popularity in the industry, this alternative, or ‘altcoin’ has emerged to allow investors to diversify their digital currency package, according to Investopedia. Litecoin is one of the most prominent altcoins and was created by former Google employee and Director of Engineering at Coinbase, Charlie Lee. Litecoin was the first to alter Bitcoin and the most significant difference is that it takes 2.5 minutes for Litecoin to generate a block, or transaction, in comparison to Bitcoin's 10 minutes. ‘While this matters little to traders, miners who use hardware to run Bitcoin's network cannot switch over to Litecoin. This keeps bigger mining conglomerates away from Litecoin because they cannot easily optimize their profits by swapping to another coin, contributing to a more decentralized experience. Litecoin also has bigger blocks, and more coins in circulation, making it more affordable and swift when transacting,’ Investopedia explained. As explained above, Litecoin can transact a lot faster than Bitcoin, but there are also a number of other characteristics that investors need to know before trading. Litecoin can handle higher volumes of transactions because of the capability of transacting faster and if Bitcoin attempted to transact on the scale of its altcoin, a code update would be needed. However, Litecoin’s blocks would be larger, but with more ‘orphaned blocks'. The faster block time of litecoin reduces the risk of double spending attacks - this is theoretical in the case of both networks having the same hashing power. Litecoin Technical Details: The transaction confirmation time taken for Litecoin is about 2.5 minutes on average (as compared to Bitcoin's 10 minutes). The Litecoin network is scheduled to cap at 84 million currency units. Litecoin has inspired many other popular alternative currencies (eg. Dogecoin) because of its Scrypt hashing algorithm in order to prevent ASIC miners from mining those coins. However it is said that by the end of this year, Scrypt ASIC will enter the mass market.
Groestlcoin is an ASIC-resistant cryptocurrency that boasts having “almost ZERO fees.” Although the coin itself is only pseudo-anonymous (like Bitcoin), the development team has ported a wallet (Samourai) to give you full anonymity. Groestlcoin is strictly a cryptocurrency for peer-to-peer (p2p) payments. The coin serves the same end-goal as other transactional cryptos like Bitcoin and Litecoin but accomplishes that goal with a different set of attributes. Groestlcoin accomplished a few significant “firsts” with its feature set. It was the first coin to implement Segregated Witness (SegWit) and the first to perform a Lightning Network transaction on mainnet. With the implementation of the Lightning Network, Groestlcoin has minimal fees. Transferring 10,000 GRS (~$6000 at the time of this writing) costs fractions of a fraction of a cent. Even if the GRS price rises 1000x, the transaction fee would be just a couple of pennies. Groestlcoin utilizes two rounds of Grøstl-512 for its mining algorithm. This mining algo is ASIC-resistant, for now. A developer going by the Bitcointalk username “Gruve_P” launched Groestlcoin on March 22, 2014. Since then, the team has grown to over 20 people spread all around the world. Most team members prefer to stay relatively anonymous, only sharing their first name and country of origin on the website. The team has been consistent in releasing new versions of the platform every three months. With such consistency, it shouldn’t shock you to hear all that they’ve accomplished in the last four years. The team activated SegWit in January 2017 and is currently working on Lightning Network releases for both their mobile and desktop wallets. The team and community have also built eleven different Android wallets, ten different wallets for Blackberry, and three for iOS. They’ve created more than ten desktop wallets as well. GRS has recently seen a rise in popularity, with most CPU and GPU miners moving away from networks like BTC, where ASIC miners have completely saturated the mining pool. With its robust features, focus on privacy, and innovative technology, GRS is a very lucrative choice for these miners, and has the possibility to be the next big coin that hits the market. While investing in any cryptocurrency is subject to their inherent volatile nature, the immense market potential of Groestlcoin, along with its pioneering technology and dedicated development team, make it a very strong consideration for investment.