Bitcoin has been getting some bad press lately,and the BitcoinTalk is still offline for 4 days now. It’s been bad news and more bad news for Bitcoin. Surely the “second” coin on everybody’s mind,Litecoin,would rise in value now ,right? Actually,no,it has even slightly dropped in value over the past few weeks. So what is wrong with Litecoin?

Well let’s take a look at Litecoin,and compare and contrast it with Bitcoin :

- Scrypt vs SHA-256 : People who mined SHA-256 with their GPU’s have mostly switched some of their machines to mining Litecoin,where GPU mining is still relevant (for now). Some miners have sold their GPU’s to invest in new SHA-256 hardware. However,there are still a lot of people out there involved with using GPU’s to mine Scrypt coins.

- Faster Block Times : The average Litecoin block is generated every 150 seconds. Compare this to Bitcoin,where every block is generated roughly every 600 seconds. Faster block times also mean faster transaction confirmations,a section where Litecoin definitely pulls ahead compared to Bitcoin.

- Current Block Rewards : Both Bitcoin and Litecoin started off with a 50 BTC/LTC block reward. Since that time,the Bitcoin block reward has halved,to 25 BTC,whereas the Litecoin block reward still has 50 LTC per block. This should,in theory,make it more attractive to mine Litecoin over Bitcoin.

- Market Cap : Bitcoin has a way higher market cap than Litecoin. For Bitcoin,the market cap is 1.5 billion USD (yes,billion,with a B). For Litecoin,the market cap is 50 million. This is rather a double-edged sword. Lower market cap can either mean a higher price per individual Litecoin,or less interest because there isn’t as much of money to go around.

- Money Supply : There will be four times as much Litecoins in existence as there will be Bitcoins. Litecoin’s money supply will reach 84 millions coins,whereas Bitcoin’s money supply will reach 21 million coins. Roughly,this puts Litecoin at 1/4th of Bitcoin’s value,which we haven’t seen come to realization yet.

Source: majesti.co