Litecoin went through a hard fork at block 1371111 on Sunday evening, resulting in the creation of Litecoin Cash (“LCC”). So what is Litecoin cash, how to buy LCC and all you need to know about the new crypto coin.
Litecoin went through a hard fork at block 1371111 on Sunday evening, resulting in the creation of Litecoin Cash (“LCC”).
There was plenty of noise in the lead up to the fork, with Litecoin founder Charlie Lee and others from the Litecoin community calling the announcement of the fork a scam.
Regardless, Litecoin rallied 60% to a week high $237.72 on Thursday, as investors moved into Litecoin in anticipation of receiving 10 Litecoin Cash coins for each Litecoin held in a Litecoin wallet at the time of the fork.
Now that Litecoin Cash does in fact exist and is already tradable, there are some distinct differences between Litecoin and Litecoin Cash, with the Litecoin Cash team looking to deliver a cryptocurrency that is miner-friendly, whilst tweaking some other key attributes.
Key characteristics of Litecoin Cash include:
The use of Bitcoin’s SHA256 algo provides prospective miners to mine for Litecoin Cash, with the SHA256 proof-of-work algorithm allowing Litecoin Cash mining using old and obsolete Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (“ASICs”) Bitcoin mining hardware.
The use of the DarkGravity V3 algorithm provides a more predictable block time environment, supporting a target block time of 2.5 minutes, resulting in the lower transaction fees.
The Litecoin Cash team’s objective is to deliver a cheap and fast SHA256 coin that has a favorable difficulty adjustment.
The first step in buying Litecoin Cash is to set up a Litecoin Cash wallet that can store your Litecoin Cash (“LCC”) coins following the purchase. The same wallet will also be used when wanting to sell LCC coins, with the coins transferable to an exchange that accepts Litecoin Cash for sale, or to a merchant in the case of a purchase.
On the Litecoin Cash website, a number of wallets have been recommended by the team to cater for Windows, MAC OSX, Linux, and mobiles.
As it is always recommended to store coins in a wallet supported by the team behind the coin, we propose that one of the wallets recommended by the Litecoin Cash team be downloaded to store the Litecoin Cash coins.
Once the wallet has been downloaded to your desktop, run the executable and follow the instructions in order to set up the wallet on your desktop.
At this point, you will need to go to File>>Import Private Key, with the private key entered needing to be backed up somewhere safe to avoid loss of the coins held within the wallet. The wallet will also need to be encrypted for added security before being backed up, though do note that the Litecoin Cash blockchain will need to be downloaded and synchronized before this step.
The Litecoin Cash website contains a “Bootstrap” download. This is an optional file that is there to synchronize your blockchain faster when you initially install Litecoin Cash.
Once synchronized, the wallet will no longer be “behind”, as it was upon download. At this point, you will need to obtain the Receive Address, by selecting the Receive tab and copy the address somewhere safe so that the LCC coins can be transferred to the wallet upon purchase. It is recommended that a new address is generated on each occasion.
Now, click on settings>>Encrypt Wallet and create a secure password that must be at least ten or more random characters, or eight or more words. It is recommended to use at least 16 characters that include letters, numbers and punctuation marks.
Upon completion, an icon on the bottom right-hand corner of the wallet will indicate that the wallet has been encrypted and locked. The password will need to be stored in a safe place as this will be needed each time you want to access the wallet and will result in losing the coins in the event of loss of the password.
With the wallet now created, LCC coins can be bought with, either U.S Dollar or Russian Roubles, or they can be purchased with one of 3 cryptocurrencies, these being Bitcoin DOGE and Ethereum.
At present, Litecoin Cash can only be bought and sold on YObit, which caters for purchasing Litecoin Cash with the pairings LCC/USD and LCC/RUR for those interested in purchasing with fiat currencies.
While it is possible to currently purchase with fiat currency, a common way to purchase Litecoin Cash will also be with one of the three crypto pairings offered by YObit.
Below is a Step-by-Step guide to buying Litecoin Cash (“LCC”) with other cryptocurrencies:
(Remember to always use strong passwords and to also enable the 2FA option when prompted).
Digital wallets are virtual wallets that allow coin holders to hold their cryptocurrencies privately as opposed to on the exchange from where they were purchased. The wallet allows coin holders to send and receive cryptocurrencies from the wallet to an exchange or merchant.
It is always advisable for coin holders to store their coins in a private wallet and not on an exchange, with many cases of coin theft having been reported from exchanges in recent times.
In the case of Litecoin Cash, the website recommends Coinomi for mobiles, which is a free secure source-available multi-coin multi-asset HD wallet for Bitcoin altcoins and tokens.
For Windows, the team recommends QT Wallet for Windows and MAC OSX and QT & headless Linux Binaries for Linux, the wallets are available for download from the Litecoin Cash website.
It is always recommended that a wallet is used that has been endorsed by the company or team behind the cryptocurrency, whilst also ensuring that the wallet has private keys and encryption of the private keys.
Wallets and private keys should always be backed up in order to avoid the loss of coins held within a wallet, as the loss of either the wallet or the private keys will result in the loss of coins held.
At present, Litecoin Cash has only been made available on YObit according to Coincodex, though there have been reports that exchanges TradeSatoshi, MEANXTRADE, Mercatox and CryptoBridge are also scheduled to list Litecoin Cash following Sunday’s fork.
As demand builds, we will expect other exchanges to begin including Litecoin Cash, with exchanges having a tendency to hold back immediately after a fork to assess the performance and demand for a resultant cryptocurrency.
As we have seen with Bitcoin Cash and other fork cryptocurrencies, any time lapse from creation to inclusion is not reflective of general sentiment towards the cryptocurrency, with some of the major cryptocurrencies yet to have been included on larger exchanges.
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Unlikely previous forks, Litecoin Cash became tradable almost immediately, with cryptocurrency exchange YObit making Litecoin Cash available for trade, removing the need for a futures or synthetic price. Litecoin Cash surged to a first hour high $8.00 before sliding to a low to $0.63 in the hour after launch. Since then, Litecoin Cash has found its legs and sits at $7.52 at the time of writing, a since launch gain of 437% (Launch Price Estimate: $1.40), whilst having hit a 24-hour high $9.99.
Investors who bought low and sold high would have made quite a tidy sum.
We have seen other cryptocurrency launches lead to sizeable rallies in the early days and the moves over the last 24-hours will certainly be called speculative in nature by some of the skeptics.
For those originally holding Litecoin and receiving the 10 Litecoin Cash coins for each Litecoin held, there won’t be any complaints and for miners with obsolete ASICs hardware sitting around, the surge in price is certainly an incentive to support the network.
Litecoin Cash and Bitcoin are perhaps to be considered more comparable than Litecoin and Bitcoin by the fact that both cryptocurrencies are on a SHA256 proof-of-work algorithm that allows the cryptomarket to make a more direct comparison from a performance and cost perspective.
It’s no crypto secret that Bitcoin has its troubles, with transaction speeds of 10-minutes and extortionate fees. Litecoin Cash has taken some elements of Bitcoin and some elements of Litecoin and delivered a hybrid, whilst also looking to drive support for the transaction speeds by making Litecoin Cash mining more accessible.
Other differences to Bitcoin include the maximum supply, with Bitcoin having just 21 million coins and a difficulty adjustment of 2-weeks, compared with each block for Litecoin Cash and the 840 million LLC coins.
While we have looked at the key differences between Litecoin and Litecoin Cash, it’s also important to note that the Litecoin Cash team have no affiliation with Litecoin, something that Litecoin founder Charlie Lee was quick to point out last week and the Litecoin Cash team have also highlight on their website.
In the creation of Litecoin, the team focused on transaction fees and speed, when switching from Bitcoin’s SHA256 algorithm to Scrypt. While there were certain improvements, the shift to Scrypt left older mining machines obsolete. While the algorithms differ, the blockchain size of approximately 13Gb is the same, both of which are far smaller than those of Bitcoin and Bitcoin’s 145Gb.
The nuances between the various cryptocurrencies and those that result from hard forks are all in an effort to become the leading crypto in the market. To-date, Bitcoin continues to sit at top of the tree, with various hybrids and enhancements having yet to test Bitcoin. We will expect the day to come, however, when Bitcoin’s mantle as the #1 coin is tested and it may well come from a fork that delivers a hybrid too good to be ignored.
With over 20 years of experience in the finance industry, Bob has been managing regional teams across Europe and Asia and focusing on analytics across both corporate and financial institutions. Currently he is covering developments relating to the financial markets, including currencies, commodities, alternative asset classes, and global equities.