Litecoin

Litecoin launched on 13 October 2011, founded by Charles Lee, ranked second in my list of top cryptocurrency to invest besides bitcoin in 2018. Litecoin was among the initial cryptocurrencies following Bitcoin and was often referred to as 'silver to Bitcoin's gold.'

It's also an open source pear-to-pear digital currency same as Bitcoin. Although Litecoin is like Bitcoin in many ways, it has a faster block generation rate and hence offers a faster transaction confirmation.

In short, the Litecoin network has virtually zero commissions and allows you to send and receive payments at a rate 5 times faster than Bitcoin.

The trend of Litecoin has always followed the Bitcoin. For quite some time, LiteCoin was nothing more than a distant competitor for Bitcoin. Though it was far less valuable, it was still there as a potential alternative.

The breakthrough came in in May 2017 when world's most trusted Bitcoin exchange called "CoinBase" started to use Litecoin alongside Ethereum and Bitcoin. Since then, investors have begun to take LiteCoin more seriously.

Additionally, the currency has also adopted "Segregated Witness" technologywhich fixes problems that Bitcoin has yet to solve. The solution adds more capacity to the network and reduces transaction fees. Litecoin is the second most accepted cryptocurrency on websites that accept virtual currency payments.

Litecoin could truly be a viable alternative to Bitcoin in coming Years. The market cap of Litecoin is $4,202,463,479 with a value of around $189.54 for 1 Litecoin.