Why are litecoin fees so low?

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Question

If litecoin has a 1MB block like bitcoin. Does that mean that if people used litecoin as much as bitcoin then the fees would be the same?

Help me understand why the fees are so low? Is it because fewer people use the network?

Answer
The price of Litecoin would have to be the same price as Bitcoin and even then it could handle roughly 4x the transactions. But there’s a lot of complicated factors that go into fees so it’s not really that simple but a decent estimate.

I don’t particularly think saying any coin having low fees and fast transaction times is a feature because the truth is if any coin gets popular enough it’s going to have fee scaling problems and if you have lower fees still somehow you are likely exchanging it for lower security as well somewhere (e.g. Litecoin has lower fees but the faster transactions potential introduces less security, other algorithms other than PoW often deal with some centralization issues, or you are relying on off-chain transactions with some level of central trust needed, etc, etc).

I don’t really think Bitcoin is slow or has high fees for what it should be used for. You shouldn’t be making payments for coffee on-chain, coffee payments make far more sense for a lightning network or an off-chain payment app or something. Trying to use Bitcoin for day-to-day payments (or any crypto IMO) is like lugging around gold everywhere with you or something and slicing off bits of it to pay for things. It’s not convenient for small transactions but it’s amazing for very large matters and backbones to larger systems. Bitcoin is EXTREMELY cheap for buying a house or taking your wealth across borders etc, etc. Paying a $20 fee to transfer MILLIONS of dollars in unheard of and destroys overhead that could trickle down to smaller systems using it as a backbone.

It’s obviously a nice perk that we live in a (brief) time where Litecoin has lower fees and is more usable for day-to-day things, but for all of crypto, this really won’t scale when we see major adoption. Just keep that in mind and just my two cents.

Your thoughts?

6 Likes
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Great answer and i agree with this. Bitcoin is more like Gold.
But the part i dont fully agree is the lower security aspect. There are several options like Dash or Pivx that uses chainlock and masternode for 0 confirmation and very fast and secure transfer (Pivx is about to add it so they dont have the chainlock yet but planning).
I know many talk about staking and masternode is centralized but i say the same about any crypto really. If your early you have a ton of the coin, be it LTC/BTC or anything. Even lightning is not very decentralized if your a whale.
In secret i do wish LTC would also move to PoS and MN system but i doubt it will ever happen.

1 Like
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Nicely put, I would d add that there is also less competition for your transaction to be included in the chain at this time.

See the mempool analysis tool below for data - LTC vs BTC over a year timeframe. A fraction of the weight and unconfirmed transaction count in the mempool compared to bitcoin:

bitcoinqueue com

I am excited to see what 2nd layer solutions will be innovated on in future

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Really nonsense what you wrote
Bitcoin is slow and yes you are suppose to be offering coffee with it but you can’t cuz it wasnt ready for future and so the issue is scaling . Litecoin is secure and would be very secure as price goes up…
Sorry but whatever you are talking don’t make sense

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Fees are lower with Litecoin because the network sets aside LTC that doesn’t derive from transaction fees in order to incentivize miners.

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Love the explanation and the low fees as well.

1 Like