Litecoin

Litecoin

Litecoin LTC Rank #19

All about Litecoin (LTC) Token - What is it, price and reliability

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What is Litecoin (LTC)?

Litecoin (LTC) is a cryptocurrency designed to provide fast, secure and low-cost payments by leveraging the unique properties of blockchain technology.

To learn more about this project, check out our detailed look at Litecoin.

The cryptocurrency was created on the basis of the Bitcoin (BTC) protocol, but it differs in terms of the hash algorithm used, maximum limit, block transaction times and some other factors. Litecoin has a block time of just 2.5 minutes and extremely low transaction fees, making it suitable for microtransactions and point-of-sale payments.

Litecoin was released via an open source client on GitHub on October 7, 2011, and the Litecoin network went live five days later on October 13, 2011. Since then, it has skyrocketed in both usage and popularity. acceptance among traders and was counted among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization for most of its existence.

The cryptocurrency was created by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee, who intended Litecoin to be a "lightweight version of Bitcoin" as it features many of the same properties as Bitcoin, albeit lighter.

Who are the founders of Litecoin?

As mentioned above, Litecoin was founded by Charlie Lee, an early adopter of cryptocurrencies and a well-respected name in the cryptocurrency industry.

Charlie Lee, also known as "Chocobo", is an early Bitcoin miner and a computer scientist who was a software engineer for Google. Additionally, Charlie Lee served as the director of engineering at Coinbase between 2015 and 2017 before moving on to other initiatives.

Today, Charlie Lee is an outspoken advocate for cryptocurrencies and is the CEO of the Litecoin Foundation, a non-profit organization that works alongside the Litecoin Core development team to help move Litecoin forward.

In addition to Lee, the Litecoin Foundation also includes three other people on the board of directors: Xinxi Wang, Alan Austin, and Zing Yang, all of whom are fully realized.

What makes Litecoin unique?

Behind Bitcoin, Litecoin is the second most popular pure cryptocurrency. This success can be largely attributed to its simplicity and clear utility advantages.

As of January 2021, Litecoin is one of the most widely accepted cryptocurrencies and over 2,000 merchants and shops now accept LTC worldwide.

Its main advantage comes from its speed and economy. Litecoin transactions are usually confirmed within minutes and transaction fees are almost negligible. This makes it an attractive alternative to Bitcoin in developing countries, where transaction fees can be the deciding factor as to which cryptocurrency to support.

In late 2020, Litecoin also saw the launch of the MimbleWimble (MW) testnet, which is used to test confidential Mimblewimble-based transactions on Litecoin. Once this feature becomes available on the core network, Litecoin users will also benefit from significantly improved privacy and fungibility.

Litecoin Mimblewimble Update

The Litecoin Foundation announced the highly anticipated update to the Mimblewimble Extension Block (MWEB) as part of the Litecoin Core 0.21.2 release candidate on January 31, 2022. MWEB is "set to be the largest update to the Litecoin network, and promises provide fungibility for all, while improving the scalability of Litecoin.” MWEB will be a trigger function, enabling Litecoin to be “the most fungible cash-like cryptocurrency in space.” Also the Taproot update to improve security and privacy will be part of the major release.

How many Litecoin (LTC) coins are in circulation?

Like most Proof-of-Work (POW) cryptocurrencies, the amount of Litecoin in circulation gradually increases with each new block mined.

As of January 2021, 66.245 million LTC have already been mined out of a total maximum supply of 84 million. The Litecoin Foundation recently estimated that it will take more than 100 years for Litecoin to reach full dilution (around the year 2140), as the amount of LTC mined per block decreases every four years as part of the reward halving program.

About 500,000 LTC were installed the first day after the LTC genesis block was mined, and Charlie Lee and presumably other early Litecoin developers were among the first miners.

Despite this, as a fairly distributed resource, Litecoin or Charlie Lee developers do not receive any direct profit from operating Litecoin, apart from anything they may earn as part of the normal mining process.

When Litecoin went public on various markets in 2011, the price of Litecoin reached $0.30. Then, from November to December 2013, it experienced a massive bull run, with the price of Litecoin reaching a high of $44.73. However, the bear market and the Mt. Gox hack caused Litecoin prices to crash in 2014 and prices have been consolidating in the $2-$4 range for several years. In November and December 2017, the Litecoin price rose over 500% to $358.34, due to the cryptocurrency bull market. Litecoin price reached an all-time high in May 2021, in the latest cryptocurrency rally, reaching $386.45 on May 9, 2021.

How is the Litecoin network protected?

As a blockchain-based cryptocurrency, Litecoin is protected by incredibly strong cryptographic defenses, making cracking virtually impossible.

Like Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies, Litecoin uses the PoW consensus algorithm to ensure transactions are confirmed quickly and error-free. The combined strength of the Litecoin mining network prevents double charges and a host of other attacks while ensuring the network has 100% uptime.

Where can you buy Litecoin (LTC)?

Litecoin is one of the few cryptocurrencies with a wide variety of fiat trading pairs and can be traded for US Dollars (USD), Korean Won (KRW), Euros (EUR), and more when you buy Litecoin. Some of the biggest names include Huobi Global, Binance, Coinbase Pro, OKEx, and Kraken.

Litecoin is one of the few cryptocurrencies with a wide variety of fiat trading pairs and can be exchanged for US Dollars (USD), Korean Won (KRW), Euros (EUR), and more.

To check the real-time Litecoin price in the fiat currency of your choice, you can use the CoinMarketCap conversion feature directly on the Litecoin currency page. Alternatively, use the page dedicated to the exchange rate converter. The most popular Litecoin price pairs include: LTC/USD, LTC/GBP, LTC/KRW, and LTC/EUR.