Litecoin (LTC) is a digital currency and was created back in 2011 as an open source project on Github by founder Charlie Lee, an ex-Google employee. LTC is a fork from the original Bitcoin and was created to improve on the initial deficiencies of the Bitcoin blockchain protocol. LTC has a lower block generation time of 2.5 minutes, an increased total supply of coins pegged at 81,000,000 and utilizes the more common scrypt hash algorithm.
Litecoin is one of the top 5 cryptocurrencies by market cap (~ $8 billion) and also one of the few cryptocurrencies that still uses a proof-of-Work consensus mechanism that can still be mined to generate block rewards. LTC cannot be profitability mined using consumer hardware like CPUs and GPUs, but rather requires specialized hardware called Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) specifically programmed to mine LTC.
When it comes to mining, you want to first think about whether you are going to solo mine or pool mine. LTC is no longer profitable to solo mine, so the best option would be to join a pool. Pool mining has associated costs like pool fees but you could see quicker rewards and reduced reward variance in comparison to solo mining. Let’s break down the elements of mining Litecoin so you get a complete understanding of the underlying technology and how the process works.
