Litecoin Miners Increase Demand, AMD Graphic Card Prices Rise

Litecoin

AMD Graphic Cards Mania

As a result of an increased demand from the digital currency miners, especially litecoin miners, the prices of graphic cards made by United States’ semiconductor Advanced Micro Devices shot up.

Currently, the Graphic cards based on AMD’s powerful R9 290X graphics processing unit (GPU) are estimated to be worth $900 because of the very high demand for it. Four months ago, they were initially launched to the techies out there for a price of about $549. That is a huge jump in price in such a short time. At the same time, the price for cards based on R9 290 GPU, less powerful than the R9 290X also saw an increase in its price. They are being sold for around $600 as compared to the $399 it started off with initially.

What is Litecoin?

Like bitcoin, litecoin is also a cryptocurrency. Mining for litecoins is different than bitcoin mining. Litecoins are mined using GPUs which are rarely, if ever, are used for bitcoin mining. Currently, bitcoins are mainly mined through the application specific integrated circuits (ASICs). ASICs are customized for specific uses.

The creation of litecoin was inspired by the development of bitcoin. As our writer Sid Sam mentioned in a previous article that litecoins are “the silver to Bitcoin’s gold in crypto currency standard.” Aptly put. An advantage of litecoin transactions is that they are much quicker than bitcoin transactions. It takes a litecoin transaction about 2.5 minutes to process and bitcoin transactions take about 10 minutes to process.

Currently, one litecoin is worth around $16 and there are about 25.7 million of these coins in circulation.

Litecoin Gains Momentum?

Shelves have emptied out of the AMD’s Radeon hardware, used to manufacture mining platforms, due to the high demand by litecoin miners. Mining for litecoin has become more difficult because of the increased numbers of miners on the network. But, surprisingly, the demand of the AMD Graphics cards has still increased. The increase in demand reflects the zeal of the advocates of litecoin. Even though it is becoming difficult and more difficult by the day to mine for litecoins, users are still willing to do and are doing it.

Litecoin to the Rescue in Madagascar

Few months ago, it was announced that litecoin users have been able to protect over a hundred jobs in Madagascar. With online donations pouring in, they were able to raise $10,000 in litcoin. The money was used to pay the Madagascans to plant more than 100,000 trees.

Litecoin seems to be making headways in to the digital currency world. The coming days will be telling.

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