{"id":1076,"date":"2022-06-17T06:47:39","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T06:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/?p=1076"},"modified":"2023-03-30T06:33:32","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T06:33:32","slug":"guide-on-how-to-mine-litecoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/guide-on-how-to-mine-litecoin","title":{"rendered":"Detailed Guide on How to Mine Litecoin (LTC). Litecoin Mining Software"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_73 counter-flat ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Content<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #223c50;color:#223c50\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #223c50;color:#223c50\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/guide-on-how-to-mine-litecoin\/#What_is_Mining\" title=\"What is Mining?\">What is Mining?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/guide-on-how-to-mine-litecoin\/#Why_Mine_Litecoin\" title=\"Why Mine Litecoin?\">Why Mine Litecoin?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/guide-on-how-to-mine-litecoin\/#How_Does_Litecoin_Mining_Work\" title=\"How Does Litecoin Mining Work?\u00a0\">How Does Litecoin Mining Work?\u00a0<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/guide-on-how-to-mine-litecoin\/#Litecoin_Mining_Software\" title=\"Litecoin Mining Software\">Litecoin Mining Software<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once you&#8217;re comfortable to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/currency.com\/buy-litecoin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">buy Litecoin<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and selling cryptocurrency, it&#8217;s time to think about getting in on the real action: mining.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you&#8217;re interested in mining Litecoin, it&#8217;s fair to assume you know a bit about it, but to recap, LTC is pitched as &#8220;the silver to Bitcoin&#8217;s gold&#8221; by its creator, Charlie Lee. It&#8217;s designed to be more usable as a currency on a day-to-day basis than Bitcoin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Litecoin is four times faster than Bitcoin, creating a new block every 2.5 minutes to Bitcoin&#8217;s 10. Four times more will also be mined before reaching the hard cap \u2014 84 million LTC compared to 21 million BTC.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"What_is_Mining\"><\/span><strong>What is Mining?<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Traditional mining as practiced by Bitcoin and Litecoin is called Proof-of-Work. It&#8217;s a consensus mechanism responsible for maintaining and growing the blockchain.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Blockchains are immutable, meaning they can only be changed by adding new information onto the end of a chain of blocks of data. What&#8217;s already written is unchangeable. New blocks are created by miners, who validate transactions, load them onto the next block, and write it onto the blockchain.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To attract miners, they are paid two rewards each time they mine a block: transaction fees, and more importantly, a cache of newly created coins \u2014 Litecoin in this case. Currently, each block earns a reward of 12.5 LTC.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Miners are randomly selected in a race to solve a math problem that can only be solved by brute force: guessing over and over until someone gets the right hash. To keep the block times stable, Litecoin&#8217;s mining difficulty changes to accommodate a rising or declining hash rate as miners come and go. That&#8217;s how to mine Litecoin in a nutshell.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Why_Mine_Litecoin\"><\/span><strong>Why Mine Litecoin?<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are a number of reasons you&#8217;d choose to mine Litecoin, beginning with the obvious making money.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, you may also want to run a node for the good of the community. Immutability aside, blockchains are censorship-proof because the host nodes are located around the world. Blockchain is <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">distributed<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> ledger technology.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, one of the reasons you would be mining for Litecoin is decidedly not to make use of your high-end gaming computer&#8217;s massive GPU when you&#8217;re not busy shooting things. While there are plenty of cryptocurrencies that can still be mined by desktop computers, Litecoin mining is so competitive that the only realistic way to do it is with specialized mining hardware \u2014 just like Bitcoin and Ethereum.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Remember, the question isn&#8217;t &#8220;how long does it take to mine a Litecoin? \u2014 the question is, &#8220;how long does it take <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">me<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to mine a Litecoin?&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"How_Does_Litecoin_Mining_Work\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>How Does Litecoin Mining Work?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those specialized computers are called ASICs \u2014 application-specific integrated circuits \u2014 which means they are built to do one thing and one thing only: mine blockchains. And not just any blockchain. Most are specific to a single cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While Litecoin is very similar to Bitcoin, it is not a fork. Creator Charlie Lee copied the Bitcoin source code when he launched Litecoin in 2011. But the speed and token cap were not the only differences. Bitcoin uses a mining algorithm called SHA-256 to process hash functions. Litecoin uses an alternative known as Scrypt, used by about more than a dozen cryptocurrencies, including Dogecoin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The best-known Litecoin miner as of October 2021 is Bitmain&#8217;s now two-year-old Antminer L3++, which can be bought for about $1,200 \u2014 $1,400 on sites including Amazon, NewEgg, and eBay. It offers a 580 MH\/s hash rate with a power consumption of 800W per hour. Running 24 hours a day, that&#8217;s 19.2 kWh or 576 kWh per month. Bitmain&#8217;s top-of-the-line LTC miner is the $12,800, 9,500 MH\/s Antminer L7.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One important caveat: When looking at Litecoin mining profitability, an important part is estimating your costs. Start by taking a look at the cost of electricity. Prices can vary wildly around the world, and power is much cheaper in some countries than in others. In some larger nations, it can also vary from region to region \u2014 while residents in Washington state would pay an average of $59 a month to run an Antminer L3++, they&#8217;d have to stump up $129 a month in Massachusetts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Remember to factor in Litecoin&#8217;s price, too. Crypto is very volatile, and a big dip will affect profitability if you&#8217;re mining to make money rather than become an LTC hodler. Your answer to the question &#8220;what to do with Litecoin&#8221; will determine if you want to shut down during dips.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While you can set up your L3++ and go mining for Litecoin as a lone wolf, the best way to mine Litecoin is to join a pool, in which hash power and rewards are shared. The biggest are Antpool, F2pool, LitecoinPool, and ViaBTC \u2014 though another major, LTC.top, was shuttered in the China mining ban, and may reappear elsewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course, if mining for Litecoin were as simple as <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">buying litecoin<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> a machine and signing up with a pool, it just wouldn&#8217;t be crypto now, would it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Start with the obvious: Look at the pool fees. Look for a mining pool with a good reputation and history to avoid scammers. Understand that a big pool mines more LTC, which means more regular payouts. Look at server downtime. Look at the payout schedule \u2014 frequency affects payout size and shorter times mean less risk if the pool collapses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Then take a deep breath and dive into payout schemes. There are dozens, and the acronyms run to six places. They include:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Pay-Per-Share (PPS):<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The pool operator pays miners a flat rate for each share of hash completed \u2014 which offers steady income but a little more risk for the operator.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Pay-Per-Last-N-Shares (PPLNS):<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Mining profits are shared out based on the number of shares the miner contributes. As solving blocks depends on luck as well as speed, miners profits will rise and fall.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Shared Maximum Pay Per Share (SMPPS):<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> PPS but doesn&#8217;t pay out more than the pool earns.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Full-Pay-Per-Share (FPPS):<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The miner gets paid PPS plus a share of the block transaction fees.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Equalized-Shared-Maximum-Pay-Per-Share (ESMPPS): <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SMPPS but distributes funds equally among all miners.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Litecoin_Mining_Software\"><\/span><strong>Litecoin Mining Software<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then you need to look into Litecoin mining software and Litecoin wallets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ASIC miners tend to come with software pre-installed, whereas GPU and CPU miners working blockchains with lower hash rates have a great deal of choice, although pools tend to have standard requirements.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then you need a wallet, which is to say, an address where your share of the Litecoin mined is sent. This can be an exchange wallet, a software wallet, or a hardware wallet. Exchange wallets tend to be the easiest to use, but exchange hacks are legendary. Software wallets give you more control over your private keys but are online and therefore hackable. Both are hot wallets. Hardware wallets, or cold wallets, are the safest as they are &#8220;air-gapped&#8221; \u2014 which is a fancy way of saying they are not connected to the internet. The more crypto you have, the more security you need.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As for what to do with the Litecoin that you earn by mining? To hold or not to hold, that is the question. In other words, do you pay your fixed costs \u2014 mainly power \u2014 out of your rewards or your pocket?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once you&#8217;re comfortable to buy Litecoin and selling cryptocurrency, it&#8217;s time to think about getting in on the real action: mining. If you&#8217;re interested in mining Litecoin, it&#8217;s fair to assume you know a bit about it, but to recap, LTC is pitched as &#8220;the silver to Bitcoin&#8217;s gold&#8221; by its creator, Charlie Lee. It&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2545,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions\/2545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalcoinprice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}