Litecoin has had a rallying couple of months, growing over 7000% to its current $76 price as of this writing. It is also the 5th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Bitcoin Cash. But what truly sets Litecoin apart as a suitable cryptocurrency for online gambling is its core function—which closely mirrors Bitcoin, with the not so small differences making all the difference. Looking to jump right into the leading Litecoin gambling sites to kickstart your online gambling room session?
We went digging and found the best cryptocurrency gambling sites worth the time, effort and financial investment you’ll want to put in.
Expect gambling sites that accept Litecoin, good reputes, reliable cash-outs, secure Litecoin wallets and gambling rooms, fair gameplay, traffic, and running tables, as well as the availability of multiple online gambling games to quench your online gambling need whenever you are ready. These are the absolute basics for considering any Litecoin gambling site out there.
You can read further down to get a grasp of what Litecoin, Litecoin gambling, and Litecoin online gambling sites are all about in this in-depth guide for [getYearEarly][/getYearEarly].
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What is Litecoin?
In October 2011, almost three years after Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first Bitcoin on January 3rd, 2009, a software engineer at Coinbase and former Google employee unveiled Litecoin.
Litecoin was meant to be a lighter version of Bitcoin, and even Charles Lee its inventor, admits Litecoin was initially a Bitcoin clone. Note the creator sold his entire stake of the cryptocurrency in 2017 to avoid a “conflict of interest” in his work for the coin.
Litecoin is an open-source, decentralized, secure (based on blockchain), anonymous, censorship-free, borderless and peer-to-peer payments method like Bitcoin albeit faster and cheaper.
Is that still entirely the case?
Not really. And here are the major reasons:
Litecoin vs Bitcoin: The Differences that Matter for Gambling
The first and most significant is how both allow mining to take place.
But first, how many coins of either kind are out there for grabs?
There are just under 53 million Litecoins in circulation out of a possible 84 million. There are just over 16 million Bitcoins circulating around compared to the maximum 21 million mincers can ever mine. The rule of demand and supply thus naturally tip in Bitcoin’s favor. That is, if you would not take the buying price into consideration. The price of one Bitcoin is more than 11 times as one Litecoin.
Also, it takes just 2.5 minutes to create a new Litecoin block on a blockchain compared to 10 minutes for Bitcoin—meaning Litecoin is 4X faster to mine than Bitcoin, which should help make Litecoin four times more convenient for playing online gambling—or any other transaction.
Check out this Litecoin vs Bitcoin comparison table by Coindesk:
Litecoin Mining vs Bitcoin Mining
Notice the algorithm differences in the shot above (Bitcoin’s SHG-256 vs Litecoin’s Scrypt)?
While both Bitcoin and Litecoin use Proof of Work consensus for mining, when you get right to it, Scrypt and SHG-256 make the process a little different depending on which one you choose—and it matters to future online gambling players and Litecoin investors alike.
Scrypt hashing is really ‘S-Crypt’ but is pronounced as Scrypt. While its faster and consumes less energy compared to SHG-256, where it really levels the ground for miners is it makes it tougher for various power miners to gang up and create a block of parallel processing Litecoin mining pools to speed up the block creation time. That is something that has gradually become a challenge in mining Bitcoin, and here’s how:
Bitcoin’s SHG-256 hashing method lets miners create the pools, use powerful (and expensive) processors and graphics cards to outdo other, less-financially-endowed miners in the Bitcoin system. At some point, about 50% of Bitcoin’s hashrate was swamped out by just 5 mining pools, leaving everyone else to contend with crazy-low running times in the other 50%.
Now, that’s also a problem because the gang could manipulate the entire Bitcoin blockchain if they managed to scoop up a 51% hashrate all to itself, technically thwarting the concept of decentralization when mining Bitcoin thereafter.
Scrypt basically hampers parallel processing by making it economically unfeasible to pool together resources for speedier mining. Ideally, that makes Litecoin mining more distributed and decentralized than Bitcoin’s.
Of course, with faster block creation time comes the need for faster transaction time which the Litecoin blockchain supports without many issues.
But with Litecoin’s faster mining and transaction speeds comes challenges; two in particular:
- Transactions’ security
Some circles argue faster Scrypt hashing means less time is given to ensuring a block’s transaction data is accurate, presenting potential (in theory) accuracy, increased orphaned block issues, and manipulation potential—but Litecoin has since ingrained Segregated Witness (Segwit) to patch that concern.
- The strain on the blockchain
At its peak in December 2017, Litecoin at some point saw over 140,000 transactions back-to-back. Huge spikes of traffic and activity would slow the blockchain to transaction speeds of between 10 and 18 minutes. Again, Litecoin has since implemented Segwit to combat that concern as well.
Both scenarios are a concern for Litecoin online gambling because you do not want to join a table just to find out you have to wait up to half an hour to have your coins reflect in your online gambling account or Litecoin wallet.
Neither do you want to lose some of that balance because the blockchain missed a couple of authentication details.
That said…
…Litecoin is decidedly 4X faster than Bitcoin, which means you can make more purchases within your gambling account in 10 minutes.
But where do you get Litecoins to help you take advantage of these benefits?
How to Get Litecoin for Use Online
You can have some by buying, trading in or successfully completing an atomic swap.
You’ll first need to open a Litecoin wallet to store your Litecoins before getting any or even making a deposit to your Litecoin accepting gambling site account.
Here is the breakdown—which is quite similar to what you would do to open a Bitcoin wallet.
Litecoin Wallets
You can choose between two categories of Litecoin wallets:
- Single-signature (singlesignature or single-sig): referring to a ‘normal’ Litecoin transaction that only requires one private key to authenticate/approve it. In case you lose the private key or it is compromised by a third-party, you could easily lose access to your Litecoins hence lose your little digital currency fortune.
- Multi-signature (multisignature or multi-sig) wallets: where you have to use two private keys to approve a Litecoin transaction. Multi-sig wallets offer an extra layer of security this way because it is tough to compromise both private keys to authenticate a transaction, lose or forget both at the same time. And in case you lose one key, you can use the other private key as a backup.
From there, you can then choose the type of Litecoin wallet you prefer. You can choose an:
- Online wallet also referred to as hot storage method, or
- Offline wallet which is also referred to as cold storage method
Types of cold storage method wallets include:
- Paper
The best example of offline cold storage for cryptocurrencies, using paper means you print out your public and private keys and keep them wherever safest to you. What you really print are QR Codes, which you need to scan to reveal the code behind the shading to approve a Litecoin transaction say, when you need to deposit Litecoin in an online gambling account. You get complete control since you are the only one that knows what’s contained in that piece of paper and where you keep it.
- Hardware
With hardware wallets, you get a USB stick-like piece of hardware to store soft copies of your public and private keys. Any time you need to authenticate a Litecoin transaction online, you’ll need to plug the dongle into your laptop’s or desktop’s USB port, connect online, and voila!
The danger here is you have to take care of the piece of equipment. For example, if you accidentally poured water on it, you may ruin the data engraved in it—locking you out of your own Litecoin funds, especially if you use a single-sig wallet. The most popular example of a hardware wallet is showcased by the Nano Ledger S and Trevor series.
Types of hot storage method wallets include:
- Desktop
Like say, a Microsoft Windows program, you get to download the Litecoin desktop client to your computer from where you can connect online and retrieve your authentication keys.
Here’s the thing, though:
You can only use the keys in the exact desktop or laptop computer you downloaded the Litecoin software into. You simply have to have that particular computer with you no matter where you go.
- Mobile
You’d basically be downloading a mobile app to serve as your wallet, which to most people is more convenient than hauling a desktop or laptop computer around.
Once you have a store for your Litecoin tokens, it’s time to buy Litecoin or trade-in something else for them.
Litecoin Exchanges
Like other leading cryptocurrencies, you can buy Litecoin from an online cryptocurrency exchange. There are several Litecoin exchanges across the web where to buy Litecoin:
- Coinbase
- Bitfinex
- Kraken
- Binance
- Cryptsy
- more Litecoin exchanges
Each exchange has its benefits and shortcomings, so be sure to do your homework there—including comparing exchange and transfer fees. Keep in mind that many exchanges are inherently centralized. That means you do not get a private key for the exchange account you get from them.
In turn, that means you do not want to directly link your Litecoin exchange account with your online gambling account. A hack happening in either end could potentially eat up your coins on the other end.
But what if you could avoid the exchanges route and swap your bitcoin or altcoin balance for Litecoin, straightaway, and within the Litecoin system?
That’s what Litecoin Atomic Swaps are all about.
Litecoin Atomic Swaps
In a nutshell, Atomic swaps refer to a smart contract protocol that allows two parties to exchange (cross-chain) one cryptocurrency for another without the need for an escrow manager or any third-party to assure trust. Neither party can default on the trade-in.
The contracts are cryptography-based such that both parties’ funds exchange in real-time to avoid front-running and liquidity issues you would normally have in a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange.
There’s more.
It is referred to as ‘atomic’ because the exchange is an “all or nothing” approach where the number of coins being exchanged (say Litecoin/Bitcoin) is indivisible—so neither one of the participants can cheat by offering the other fewer coins than agreed.
How does that happen?
It all works out on the back of the Lightning Network (LN) first launched in March 2018 by Lightning Labs for main-net on both Litecoin and Bitcoin.
We will not complicate this further…
…so, basically, an LN powers Atomic Swaps. How atomic swaps work is by using Hashed Timelock Contracts (HTLC). What an HTLC does is make it possible for two parties to open up a payments channel where they can transfer funds to each other prior to a pre-agreed time limit (deadline).
When submitted, cryptographic proofs acknowledge the payment/transaction.
Here’s something else of interest, probably useful when you need an online Litecoin gambling balance remitted.
HTLC also allows the party on the receiving end of a payment to forfeit it and instead have the funds go back to the payer.
Cointelegraph published a post comparing centralized exchanges alternatives that go into detail and explain why atomic swaps are even better than transacting through a decentralized Litecoin exchange.
How to Deposit Litecoin
The direct route involves a few steps you’ll be over with in minutes.
- Simply head over to the cashier section of your Litecoin accepting gambling room
- Choose Litecoin as your preferred currency of payment. That generates a Receivers’ ID in the form of a long strip of letters and numbers. That is the public key you’ll be required to point your private key to approve the Litecoin transfer.
- Copy that key.
- Log in your Litecoin wallet
- Tap on “Send Litecoin”
- Choose the value (either in US dollars or milliLitecoins (mLTC)) and enter it
- Paste the key from the cashier to the “send it to” entry tab
- Confirm transaction
- Click “Send”
Small amounts of Litecoin transfer almost instantly while larger sums take a little longer to reflect in the online gambling account.
How to Withdraw Litecoin
You can withdraw your Litecoin tokens to your wallet or to an exchange. Simply log in to your Litecoin wallet and tap on the receive option. You’ll receive your Receivers’ ID this way. Copy that ID. Then log into the Litecoin friendly gambling site account and initiate the transfer from there by choosing the send option.
You’ll then have to choose “Withdraw” and follow up by choosing Litecoin as your withdrawal currency of choice. Enter the amount you want to withdraw and paste your Receivers’ ID in the next entry box to instruct the system to send the funds to your wallet. Confirm the details and send.
There you have it.
Litecoin Gambling FAQ
Are Litecoin gambling sites legal in the US?
Online gambling is not a federal felony with a New York judge declaring gambling as a skilled game rather than a pure gambling game, which are illegalized by the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA). Be sure to check what the law on gambling requires of you in your jurisdiction.
How much do Litecoin accepting gambling sites charge as transaction fees?
Each one has a unique fees structure you can check out by confirming on their websites or enquiring from them through their contacts pages or live chat.
Should I use Litecoin over Bitcoin?
Bitcoin’s popularity could mean you are likely to find more Bitcoin gambling sites offering more online gambling games than you may find when using Litecoin deposits. However, there is a huge selection of Litecoin accepting gambling sites in the US and around the globe, supporting a decent chunk of games, traffic, and security levels. Litecoin tokens are also cheaper and much faster to transact.
Is Litecoin gambling anonymous?
Part of a decentralized cryptocurrency core benefit is the anonymity factor, and many sites offer it although some will require you to provide identification when you sign up with them.