How to Buy Litecoin
Two Ways to Buy Litecoin with Cash
Bitcoin’s great, but there are so many other digital currencies you can buy, trade and sell. In particular, we often find people asking how to buy Litecoin. Especially how to buy Litecoin with cash.
What is Litecoin?
Litecoin (LTC) was launched in 2011 as the “lite version of Bitcoin.” Its developers have always maintained that they were creating the “Silver” to Bitcoin’s “Gold.” Because of that, it keeps many of the features of Bitcoin while changing what the founders felt could be improved.
Like Bitcoin, Litecoin is an open source, peer-to-peer decentralized global payment network that lets people control their own finances. But it has faster transaction times and improved storage efficiency. While BTC’s transaction confirmation process takes almost 10 minutes — the time to verify a block and add it to the blockchain — Litecoin takes only 2 ½ minutes, or 25% of the time.
The LTC mining process is similar to BTC, but Litecoin uses a newer and less complex algorithm. Rather than a 21-million-coin limit, Litecoin has a limit of 84 million (four times as much), with each unit being worth significantly less than BTC.
How do I Buy Litecoin with Cash?
If you want to buy Litecoin with cash, you have two options:
- Peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange
- Bitcoin ATM
While P2P used to be the only way to do this, the process is a bit archaic and convoluted, so most people choose not to do it that way. This method involves negotiating with a stranger online, then meeting them in a public place to give them cash and hope they deliver on the LTC. If they don’t, there’s not much you can do. You have to trust them, and it’s easy for them to scam you, rob you or worse.
