Litecoin PriceLTC

Litecoin Overview

Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world. It is an open-source, global payment network that is fully decentralized, without any central authorities. Mathematics secures the network and empowers individuals to control their own finances. Litecoin features faster transaction confirmation times and improved storage efficiency compared to the leading math-based currency. With substantial industry support, trade volume, and liquidity, Litecoin is a proven medium of commerce complementary to Bitcoin.

Charlie Lee released Litecoin via an open-source client on GitHub on October 7, 2011; the Litecoin Network went live five days later on October 13, 2011. Contract address (as listed on CoinMarketCap): 0xecb5...fb63b4.

Blockchain Secured

The Litecoin blockchain is the largest global scrypt-based network, operating with 100% uptime since 2011, securing and tracking billions of dollars in value. It is capable of handling higher transaction volume than its counterpart, Bitcoin. Due to more frequent block generation, the network supports more transactions without needing software modifications in the future. As a result, merchants get faster confirmation times while still having the ability to wait for more confirmations when selling higher-value items.

How Is Litecoin Different from Bitcoin?

The first difference between Litecoin and Bitcoin lies in their maximum supply cap. Bitcoin has a supply capped at 21 million, while Litecoin's supply is constrained to 84 million. Another distinction lies in the mining protocols: Bitcoin uses SHA-256, whereas Litecoin relies on a modified version of Scrypt. This difference affects transaction processing times. Litecoin processes and confirms transactions four times faster than Bitcoin. However, this speed can come at the expense of security, as fewer rounds of transaction verification are involved. Litecoin's confirmation time of 2.5 minutes (compared to Bitcoin's roughly 10 minutes) is convenient for small merchants who do not require extremely high security for their transactions.

• Litecoin is merge mined with Dogecoin; Dogecoin began merge-mining with Litecoin in September 2014.

Litecoin Developments

Litecoin has shifted from an ecosystem dominated by individual miners to a more corporate setup, where large mining pools run by tech firms account for the overwhelming majority of Litecoin mining. It has a lower market capitalization compared to more popular coins. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most traded cryptocurrencies, maintaining a position within the top 30 coins among the more than 18,000 tracked by CoinMarketCap. This demonstrates its continued popularity, though it does not attract the same level of investor interest as Bitcoin or some newer cryptocurrencies.

In May 2022, the MWEB (Mimblewimble Extension Blocks) upgrade was activated as a soft fork, giving users the option of confidential transactions where the amount sent is known only to sender and receiver.

Circulating supply is approximately 77.69M LTC, about 92.5% of the 84M total supply. The block reward started at 50 LTC and halves every 840,000 blocks; as of 2023 the block reward is 6.25 LTC.

Third-party vendors providing point-of-sale infrastructure for Litecoin include BitPay.

All-time high: $412.96 on May 10, 2021; all-time low: $1.11 on January 14, 2015.

The Litecoin Foundation is a non-profit organisation that promotes and develops Litecoin, working alongside the Litecoin Core Development team; its board includes Charlie Lee, Xinxi Wang, Alan Austin and Zing Yang.

In September 2021, a fake press release on GlobeNewswire announced a Litecoin–Walmart partnership, briefly pushing the price up around 30% before it was exposed as a hoax.

Like all cryptocurrencies, Litecoin carries risk. Its price can be highly volatile, regulatory policies in various jurisdictions may affect its availability and use, and technical risks such as software vulnerabilities or network attacks may exist. Investors should conduct their own research and consider their own circumstances before making any decisions.

Founders & Core Team

Litecoin was created by Charlie Lee, an American computer scientist (born 1977) who serves as managing director of the Litecoin Foundation and was previously director of engineering at Coinbase (2015–2017).