Litecoin (LTC)

What is Litecoin?

Although Litecoin was not the first cryptocurrency to copy the Bitcoin code and change its features, it is historically one of the most important cryptocurrencies to create a strong market in a short period of time, even if sometimes It has been criticized for its lack of clear value proposition.

Just like Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin runs on an open source blockchain that is not controlled by any central authority. Each Litecoin node operator has a copy of each blockchain to ensure that new transactions do not conflict with the history of previous transactions, and that miners help process new transactions by including them in newly mined blocks.

There are several main differences between Litecoin and Bitcoin. Transactions in Litecoin are done faster and this cryptocurrency has more supply. In addition, Litecoin uses a different hashing algorithm to keep mining fair for everyone. These differences are believed to contribute to the success of LTC and remain one of the top cryptocurrencies over the years.

Who is the founder of Litecoin?

Litecoin (LTC) was created by Charlie Lee, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lee is a former Google engineer who became interested in Bitcoin in 2011 and joined CoinBase CryptoCurrency Exchange as an engineering director in 2013 after creating Litecoin.

After joining the crypto exchange, Lee largely abandoned the development of Litecoin. At the time, he said he believed helping people was important to "owning and maintaining bitcoins'' because Litecoin was not ready to grow.

In late 2017, Lee left the company to pursue full-time LTC development. Currently, he serves as the CEO of the Litecoin Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting cryptocurrency.

In December 2017, he revealed that he was selling and donating all of his LTC, as he was often accused of tweeting about the cryptocurrency for personal gain. Litecoin was trading at around $ 350 at its peak at the time, which was widely criticized.

But why Litecoin? In a statement issued by Litecoin in October 2011 to the Bitcoin talk association, Lee stated that he wanted to create a coin that is like silver as gold is for bitcoin, using the best innovations of bitcoin and other alternative cryptocurrencies that were active at the time.

Key features of Litecoin

Litecoin inflation is controlled by the halving mechanism. Since the cryptocurrency was created in 2011, its blockchain has been secure enough to prevent 51% of attacks and has no security issues.

Its reliability is an important factor that benefits it. Since it has not suffered any major abuse, it is in fact known as the "silver" of the cryptocurrency world: a reliable cryptocurrency that can be used to trade at relatively low cost.

This cryptocurrency is currently popular among investors and traders who rely on supply and limited release to make profit from its price changes.

Litecoin is a highly liquid cryptocurrency that is available at most major cryptocurrency exchanges. Because network transactions are relatively inexpensive, some even use it to transfer funds between different exchanges or lending platforms to avoid high transaction fees on networks such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.

The Litecoin network continuously processes more than 100,000 transactions per day and usually has between 200,000 and 300,000 active addresses. While it is not as popular as the Bitcoin network, its functionality seems undeniable.

Litecoin vs. Bitcoin: What are the differences?

While Litecoin was launched with the goal of becoming digital "silver", just like Bitcoin, known as digital “gold”, it has been designed to address some of the shortcomings and challenges of Bitcoin.

The goal was to make it easier for merchants to accept LTC payments by making transactions faster than the Bitcoin blockchain.

The table below briefly discusses the main differences between the two networks.