It truly shines as a regular transactional medium, with only bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple seeing a greater daily trade volume. There may be leaner coins and some with more advanced features than Litecoin today, but it has firmly cemented itself as one of the most important cryptocurrencies. It might not quite be the silver to bitcoin’s gold anymore, but it is one of the most precious digital metals we have, and it doesn’t seem likely to fall from favor anytime soon. Litecoin transactions are typically confirmed in just minutes, and transaction fees are nearly negligible. This makes it an attractive alternative to Bitcoin in developing countries, where transaction fees may be the deciding factor on which cryptocurrency to support.

• It was initially designed to address the developer’s concerns that Bitcoin was becoming too centrally controlled and to make it more difficult for large-scale mining firms to gain the upper hand in mining.
• Litecoin has less purchasing power and a lower LTC/USD exchange rate than other cryptos and hasn’t yet gained the kudos of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
• As of December 2021, the Litecoin MWEB protocol is still under development.
• None of the content on CoinCentral is investment advice nor is it a replacement for advice from a certified financial planner.
• Placing a higher emphasis on utilizing high-speed RAM, Litecoin makes it much less possible for a single player (or small collective group of big players) to dominate the mining world.

How Is Litecoin Different From Bitcoin?

Most top cryptocurrency exchanges have Android and iOS mobile apps for investing or trading on the go. The name comes from his vision of making “a lighter version of Bitcoin” which would be more convenient to use on a day-to-day basis. Oddly enough, Charlie considers Bitcoin to be the undisputed king of the cryptocurrency space and even advises people to invest in Bitcoin before anything else, including Litecoin. He also considers Litecoin to be the ‘digital silver’ which compliments Bitcoin, which is ‘digital gold’. While bitcoin is capped at a maximum supply of 21 million coins, Litecoin is capped at 84 million coins.

Ethereum: Infinite Supply

They can help you determine how much you could realistically invest in cryptocurrency and how it fits into your overall financial plan. Litecoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world. A truly global payment network that doesn’t rely on any central authorities.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin says never sold Ether for profit, ETH slips under $2,400

Sign up for free online courses covering the most important core topics in the crypto universe and earn your on-chain certificate – demonstrating your new knowledge of major Web3 topics. Right now it’s a bit of a race for which currency will become the one we all use for everyday transactions. That means it’s easier for regular people to earn money from mining Litecoin.

Why might Litecoin crash to sub-$50 levels?

• However, Litecoin produces tokens at four times the rate Bitcoin does and has a smaller network, so it uses less energy to produce a block reward (at least in May 2024).
• Generating new blocks on the bitcoin blockchain can take about 10 minutes.
• In fact, Litecoin holders will find that merchants such as Newegg, SlingTV and even nonprofits like the American Red Cross are happy to accept their cryptocurrency.
• While Litecoin sought to bring more mining power to individuals, this win was short lived and encountered some challenges.
• Due to more frequent block generation, the network supports more transactions without a need to modify the software in the future.
• Mimblewimble also uses Dandelion technology, which hides any IP address data in a transaction.

The broader differences between the two cryptocurrencies are listed in the table below. From a technological perspective, Litecoin is a 100% decentralised network. Users have complete control over their money and the What is Litecoin decisions they make. Litecoin is a decentralized, open-source global payment network not controlled by any central authority. Every node operator maintains a copy of the blockchain, verifying transaction consistency.

Who Are the Founders of Litecoin?

• Litecoin took its first steps towards integrating Mimblewimble back in October 2019, with the Litecoin Mimblewimble testnet launching in October 2020.
• Solving hashes requires immense computing power, which requires significant energy and space.
• At the time of writing, it trades slightly down by 1% at $61.96 on Friday.
• Like some of the other alternative cryptocurrencies out there, interest in Litecoin as a transactional medium has increased in recent months thanks to bitcoin’s value spike and its escalating transaction fees.
• The cryptocurrency was created by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee, who intended Litecoin to be a “lite version of Bitcoin,” in that it features many of the same properties as Bitcoin—albeit lighter in weight.
• However, there have been significant developments in this space since Litecoin’s inception.

This is an immediate advantage for small transactions since splitting a $10 Uber with a friend doesn’t make sense for most people if you have to pay $5.00 on top of that. Litecoin offers the option to pay for everyday goods without high fees that start to add up very quickly. Litecoin (LTC) is a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that was released on October 7th, 2011, and went live on October 13th, 2011.

Most Visited Cryptocurrencies

Litecoin is one of the few cryptocurrencies with a wide variety of fiat trading pairs, and can be exchanged for U.S. dollars (USD), Korean won (KRW), euros (EUR) and more when you buy Litecoin. Some of the most prominent names include Huobi Global, Binance, Coinbase Pro, OKEx and Kraken. When Litecoin listed on several markets in 2011, the Litecoin price hit $0.30. Then, from November to December 2013, it went on a massive bull run, with Litecoin price hitting a high of $44.73. However, the bear market and Mt. Gox hack caused Litecoin prices to crash in 2014, and prices consolidated within the $2 to $4 range for several years. In November and December of 2017, Litecoin price rallied over 500% to $358.34, on the back of the crypto bull market.

It has aspects of privacy and scalability, making it a more suitable form of payment than cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Many people use Bitcoin as a store of value and inflation hedge while using Litecoin for payments. A new Litecoin block generates around every 2.5 minutes, 4x faster than Bitcoin’s 10-minute block generation time. Like Bitcoin, when first created, the block rewards were 50 Litecoin (LTC) per block.