Today, we will be looking at two of the most popular coins in the crypto space – Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. Both coins have been forked off from the original Bitcoin protocol, but for entirely different reasons.
In Brief:
- Charlie Lee created Litecoin in 2011.
- Bitcoin Cash forked off from Bitcoin in 2017.
- Litecoin has 84 million coins and uses SegWit.
- Bitcoin Cash has a 32 mb block size and doesn’t use SegWit.
- Litecoin vs Bitcoin Cash transaction fees.
Litecoin vs Bitcoin Cash: The Origin Story
Both Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash have interesting origin stories related to Bitcoin.
Charlie Lee and Litecoin
In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto created the Bitcoin whitepaper, and they introduced the world to BTC and blockchain technology. In 2011, a young computer scientist working for Google named Charlie Lee created Litecoin as an alternative to Bitcoin. He wanted to make a digital silver to Bitcoin’s digital gold.
Bitcoin Cash and Civil War
Bitcoin Cash’s story is a lot more controversial. If you want the full gossip then check out our Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash article. Long story short, some folks in the Bitcoin community wanted to increase the block size, while others didn’t. Those who did, forked away from the main chain to make Bitcoin Cash. During this original fork, the most prominent members of Bitcoin Cash were Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, Craig Wright, and Calvin Ayre. However, thanks to another disagreement, Bitcoin Cash has further forked into Bitcoin Cash (Roger Ver and Jihan Wu) and Bitcoin SV (Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre).
Also read: Bitcoin vs Ethereum: Which is a Better Investment?
Litecoin vs Bitcoin Cash: Technical Differences
Both Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash have taken different approaches to fix Bitcoin’s scalability problem. Litecoin has taken the “Volume” route, while Bitcoin Cash has taken the “Size” route.
Litecoin Scalability
The block production time aka “block time” of the Litecoin blockchain is 2.5 million, which is one-fourth of that of Bitcoin (10 mins). To balance things out, LTC has an upper cap of 84 million, as opposed to 21 million, and halves every 840,000 blocks instead of 210,000 blocks. On top of that, Litecoin has also integrated the SegWit (Segregated Witness) sidechain to store signature data and increase capacity within the blocks. Litecoin manages to do 56 transactions per second. BTW, if you want to know more about SegWit, check out the Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash article that we have linked above. ^^
Bitcoin Cash Scalability
Unlike Bitcoin and Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash has not integrated SegWit and has tackled the scalability problem by first increasing the individual block size to 8 MB and then 32 MB. Bitcoin Cash manages 100 transactions per second, which is almost twice as many as Litecoin, and around 10 times faster than Bitcoin.
Also read: Bitcoin vs Cardano: A Brief Comparison
Litecoin vs. Bitcoin Cash: Transaction Fees
It is crucial to compare Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash when it comes to transaction fees since their primary utility is to be a mode of payment and not store-of-value. Firstly, let’s check out the Litecoin transaction fees.
According to BitInfoCharts, the average transaction fees for Litecoin has been around $0.027 USD and median transaction fees around $$0.00092
Now, let’s look at Bitcoin Cash.
When you look at Bitcoin Cash, we can see that the average transaction fees for BCH are $0.0086 USD and median transaction fees are around $0.0015.
So, we can safely conclude that Bitcoin Cash has been consistently cheaper than Litecoin.
Litecoin vs Bitcoin Cash: An Overview
| Litecoin | Bitcoin Cash | |
| Creation | 2011 | 2017 |
| Token | LTC | BCH |
| Halving Time | 840,000 blocks | 210,000 blocks |
| Upper Cap | 84 million | 21 million |
| Consensus Mechanism | Proof-of-Work | Proof-of-Work |
| Block Time | 2.5 mins | 10 mins |
| Throughput | 56 transactions per second | 100 transactions per second |
Where Do I Buy LTC and BCH?
If you are interested in Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, you can buy the tokens via CoinSmart. Buy cryptocurrencies with ease via CAD, EUR, and USD.
Alright, it’s quiz time!
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- You have a verified CoinSmart account (to get your reward if you successfully answer all the questions).
- You use the same email in the quiz that you use to register your CoinSmart account.
