It would be impossible to spend much time exploring the cryptocurrency world without coming across one of the oldest and most recognized coins: Litecoin (LTC). Similar to Bitcoin, Litecoin is an open-source peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Importantly, Litecoin was created to address some of the problems with Bitcoin, the first widely used cryptocurrency. To this degree, many in the industry have also referred to Litecoin as the “silver” to Bitcoin’s “gold.”
Litecoin (LTC): What is it
One of the first cryptocurrencies to hit the market was Litecoin. Consequently, based on market capitalization, it continues to be one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the industry. You may buy this extremely well-liked coin on almost all cryptocurrency exchanges. It’s also one of the cryptocurrencies that is accepted the most frequently worldwide. Litecoin can be used to pay for products, services, or even future investments in other cryptocurrency projects.
The decentralized nature of Litecoin is maintained by the use of blockchain technology. Traditional fiat currencies and decentralized currencies are very different from one another. They are typically not issued by a centralized body like a government. Instead, Litecoins are created through a cryptographic process. Litecoins are formally distributed under the MIT/X11 license.
The Function of Litecoin (LTC)
The way that Litecoin works is pretty similar to how Bitcoin does. In reality, Satoshi Nakamoto’s publication of the Bitcoin protocol served as a direct inspiration for this online payment method. The fact that Litecoin was one of the first Bitcoin forks to enter the market surprises a lot of people. As a result, despite some significant variations, this cryptocurrency is essentially identical to Bitcoin in terms of technicality.
Charlie Lee, the creator of LTC, started his Litecoin project by stealing the fundamental code from Bitcoin. He then changed the protocol in a number of significant ways. One of the major improvements he made was to cut the block approval time in half, from 10 minutes to 2.5. These blocks include the subsequent group of transactions pending clearance, just like in Bitcoin.
Total Supply of LTC
The limited supply of Litecoin and cryptocurrencies in general is one of their key appeals. Litecoins are only created at predetermined intervals once a block of transactions has been approved by the network, unlike fiat currency, which governments can print whenever they choose. There will only ever be 84 million Litecoins created in total. It’s interesting to see that the developers’ straightforward calculations led to this sum.
Basically, engineers determined that it would be a good idea to give the network 4x the tokens as Litecoin processes transactions at a rate of 4x that of Bitcoin. Importantly, this set number of coins also ensures that inflation won’t have an impact on the currency’s overall worth over time. Each Litecoin should increase in value over time as more time passes. Over 65,177,458 Litecoins are already available on the market as of right now.
Many traders believe that Litecoin is a more long-term solution on the market. Their opinions have some validity. For starters, LTC is less volatile than its older brother Bitcoin. Additionally, this project’s development team has a few advantages over Bitcoin’s development team. Particularly, LTC developers have often demonstrated their desire to stay on the cutting edge of technology. The Segregated Witness update was the first to be added to the platform.
Furthermore, Litecoin launched the Lightning Network months before Bitcoin. Months before Bitcoin, LTC implemented the Segregated Witness technology in May 2017. The project’s development team also carried out its first Lightning Network transaction from Zürich, Germany, to San Francisco in the same year.
The Litecoin timeline (LTC)
The longtime Bitcoin enthusiast Charlie Lee published the project’s whitepaper in October 2011, which marked the beginning of Litecoin’s storied path to prominence. Notably, Lee was a former Google employee who had been interested in Bitcoin from the beginning. While acknowledging the potential of Bitcoin at the time, Lee also observed numerous flaws that, if fixed, may encourage widespread adoption of blockchain technology. Reduced transaction times, fees, and the abolition of concentrated mining pools were the main changes made by Lee.
Amazingly, it only took Litecoin two years to reach a market capitalization of $1 billion. Today’s market is still dominated by the coin. Notably, on December 18th, 2017, Litecoin reached its formally recorded all-time high of $360.93. Incredibly, compared to the tokens’ value a year earlier, this value represented an 8200 percent gain. Litecoin’s market value at the time was only about $4.40.
In a curious turn of events, Lee made the decision to sell every Litecoin he owned in December 2017. At the time, Lee stated his reasoning for the choice in a Reddit post. He said he was worried about his increasing power on the platform. When discussing the price of Litecoin or even just positive or negative news, Lee is cited as saying, “Whenever I tweet about it, I get accused of doing it for personal gain. Some even believe I short LTC! Because I have so much influence, it is somewhat of a conflict of interest for me to own LTC and tweet about it. He ultimately came to the conclusion that it was best to steer clear of the potential conflict of interest that comes with being LTC’s founder.
