Bitcoin speculators may opt for cost-effective Litecoin instead

By Rizza Sta. Ana

Dec 14, 2013 04:10 AM EST

A report by ZNET outlined the benefits of switching bets from Bitcoin to a more cost-effective crypto-currency, especially for coin miners. Jason O'Grady said in its report that mining Bitcoins is way expensive than its cheaper alternatives because the former's hype have driven its cost up, from the actual Bitcoins to the hardware being used to mine or obtain the virtual currency. This also goes specially for the prospective average investor who wishes to not only acquire crypto-currencies similar to Bitcoin, but mine them, the report said.

O'Grady championed Litecoin as the better option to invest in from hardware to actual crypto-currency. As it is the second largest crypto-currency in terms of its current market capitalization at $740,507,830, it is simply more affordable to obtain a Litecoin at $30 apiece as oppose to Bitcoin at under $1,000 a coin.

Moreover, in his article, O'Grady said Litecoin solves the dilemma of competition in a sharply growing hardware race found in Bitcoin mining. Bitcoins and Litecoins require super efficient and heavy-memory computers that can product more calculations to earn, or in tech terms, mine coins. In Bitcoin, O'Grady said investors who have more faster computers tend to get cheated out of their efforts as Bitcoin mining nowadays involves mining in pools. This means that the distribution of Bitcoins is evenly distributed to the pool who has presented the right solution to the mathematical problem, therefore the pool gets a reward and not the actual problem solver. Bitcoins are awarded in schedule to pools and then evenly distributes it to everyone involved in the pool, O'Grady said.

Litecoin, O'Grady said, have a schedule of 84 million coins to be mined, which is four times more than Bitcoin's 21 million, therefore plenty enough for future investors. Moreover, Litecoin's mining software is hardware competition-resistant. On the other hand, the components for Litecoin mining are not economically-friendly though to begin with, says O'Grady. However, he said that given the accelerating acceptance of crypto-currency in the markets today, early speculators may want to start betting into Litecoin to cash into alternative currency as costs are still considerably smaller than investing in Bitcoin. The article noted that the technologies behind both Bitcoin and Litecoin are each unique, and that other crypto-currencies simply follow with a few minor tweaks.

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