Broker to Trading

Regulated broker Pepperstone offers CFD trading in the cryptocurrencies Litecoin and Dash on MT4 as well as MT5, cTrader and TradingView. Litecoin is available for trading 24/7. In CFD trading, the trader does not own the cryptocurrency, rather speculates on its movement in value.

What is Litecoin ?

Litecoin is a cryptocurrency. An issue with cryptocurrencies when used as payment methods is scalability, that is what happens when the demand increases, in terms of required transactions per second. Cryptocurrencies are built typically on the blockchain, which consists of 'blocks' of data (which includes payment transactions involving Litecoin), chained because each block has a reference to a preceding block. A potential bottleneck in terms of processing transactions, is generating blocks, which are created as transactions are processed by miners. Litecoin is built on a blockchain implementation which allows blocks to be generated with increased frequency.

When blocks are created, Litecoins are generated, as payment to the miners who create the blocks. In order to create the block, the miner needs to solve a mathematical problem. While blocks can be created indefinitely (limited by such factors as the speed of mining), the number of Litecoins is limited.

Thus payment processing is performed at the level of each transaction by miners who are incentivised (and rewarded) by receiving payment of the cryptocurrency itself, which is why it is a decentralised system for processing data - there is no central clearinghouse. The validated transactions are added to a block which is added to a chain, with a time stamp, which is deemed an immutable record or ledger of all transactions on that blockchain.

Each blockchain implementation can be seen as having pluses and minuses, thus new cryptocurrenies are created which may aim to address such issues, like Litecoin and Dash. A feature both share is that they are cryptocurrencies, rather than value tokens in a wider platform.

Does the trader own the cryptocurrency ?

The trader does own the cryptocurrency as they are trading CFDs, based on the underlying cryptocurrency. This means they do not need a wallet and can go long or short.

What is Pepperstone's minimum deposit ?

Pepperstone's minimum deposit is $200 or £100 or AU$200. Pepperstone.

What is Dash ?

Dash is a cryptocurrency ('Digital Cash'). It should be noted that Dash and Dashcoin are two separate cryptocurrencies. Dash is also built on the blockchain and uses miners to create the ledger of transactions involving Dash. It has an added feature, called masternodes, which means that miners are involved in securing the blockchain, but masternodes take on the role of validating, serving and storing the blockchain.

Like miners, masternodes are incentivised to create the ledger, by being rewarded with Dash. The reason for using masternodes is to do with increasing transaction speed and security, as masternodes, which have exacting technical requirements, essentially aim to specialise and optimse some of the processes used in creating the ledger.

Is weekend trading available ?

The underlying cryptoassets are traded 24/7. Pepperstone offers 24/7 trading of all its Crypto CFDs, except for Dash.

Does Pepperstone charge commissions for trading cryptocurrencies ?

While Pepperstone charges commissions for trading Forex and Metals on its Raw account, it does not charge commissions for trading Cryptocurrency CFDs.

Can the trader use MT4 ?

Cryptocurrencies are available on MT4. However Pepperstone also offers Cryptocurrency CFDs on the cTrader platform and on MT5 and TradingView.

What other Cryptocurrency CFDs are offered ?

Pepperstone offers Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, Chainlink, Dogecoin, Binance Coin, EOS, Polkadot, Stellar, Uniswap, Tezos, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche and Terra in addition to Litecoin and Dash.