Today’s Litecoin Price
Today’s ZCash Price
After years of dominance, Bitcoin has now been sidelined by its competent rivals who have surged the cryptomarket in the last couple of years and have brought with them some of the most incredible features which Bitcoin developers probably didn’t conceive even in their wildest dreams. Both Litecoin and ZCash have been giving tough competition to their forefather and have already made it to the list of top 5 cryptocurrencies in the world.
Founded in the year 2011 by Charles Lee, Litecoin was launched as a probable alternative for Bitcoin’s slow network. It has implemented a similar design as that of the Bitcoin Blockchain, though with a twist. Both Bitcoin and Litecoin are decentralized public ledgers that run on an open-source network. However, unlike Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work SHA256 protocol, Litecoin runs on the Proof-of-Work Scrypt protocol. While the Bitcoin platform has a lengthy transaction time of 10 minutes, on Litecoin, the processing time is reduced by one-fourth (Litecoin takes only 2.5 minutes to process a transaction). To add to this advantage is the LTC limit, which is exactly four times as that of Bitcoin (84 million in contrast to Bitcoin’s 21 million). Another reason why Litecoin stands over and above Bitcoin is its upcoming installation of the SegWit upgrade which will resolve the scalability and interoperability issues. However, Litecoin is yet to reach Bitcoin’s huge market cap. Despite the manifold benefits that it offers, this deflationary coin is not that widely accepted and has completely overlooked the palpable issues that Bitcoin users are facing at the moment- that of security and traceability.
Unlike Litecoin (which is a public coin), ZCash is a decentralized, privacy-centric, inflationary coin that is based on a ‘zero-knowledge’ protocol which ensures the security and privacy of its online users. ZCash allows peer-to-peer trades and exchanges without revealing the sender or the receiver’s identity or the amount of the transactions. Its zk-Snark network (based on Proof-of-Construction algorithm) allows complete anonymity to its users- something that both Bitcoin and Litecoin have overlooked. Like Bitcoin, ZCash has an aggregate coin supply of 21 million. When it comes to mining, ZCash uses Equihash, an asymmetric, memory-driven, Proof-of-Work hashing algorithm, which makes it difficult for a regular user to mine ZEC. This is where Litecoin proves to be a better channel. Any regular user can mine Litecoin using GPUs or CPUs. If you are looking for security, ZCash may seem like a better option. But the fact that this platform has still not fully implemented the technical wizardry and is still in a developing stage, gives one the benefit of doubt. ZCash or Litecoin- the choice is ultimately that of the user- though the market cap and current valuation should also be taken into account when coming to a solid decision.
