Litecoin is a cryptocurrency created by Charlie “Satoshi Lite” Lee, a former Google developer. An infamous cryptocurrency personality, Lee sold his Litecoin assets during the height of the last crypto bubble. But Lee said it was done to avoid a potential conflict of interest.
Lee is the Managing Director of the Litecoin Foundation, a team focused to growing Litecoin adoption, market value, and long-term growth.
Cryptographically, Litecoin is a fork of the Bitcoin Core client. The biggest difference is a 2.5 minute block creation period versus 10 minutes for Bitcoin. This reduces transaction times and gives the coin its name.
Litecoin is referred regarded as the digital silver to Bitcoin's digital gold narrative due to its close relationship with Bitcoin. Both assets have a hard-capped supply, analogous to precious metals.
Litecoin has recently been utilized as a testbed for anticipated second-layer technologies like Segregated Witness and the Lightning Network.
The total supply of Litecoin is 84 million. The project began with 150 pre-mined tokens (minted by Litecoin devs before the public launch).
The project started with a payout of 50 litecoin every block, which was then halved every 840,000 blocks. The final block should be mined in 2142.
LTC pricing history has peaks and valleys. Litecoin's price rose above $250 in December 2017 and April/May 2021 before plummeting dramatically.
The price of LTC peaked at $412.96 in May 2021, but declined by over 50% in the next six months.
Litecoin users transmit and receive LTC on the blockchain by entering their public keys.
Litecoin's code is quite similar to Bitcoin's. Unlike Bitcoin's proof-of-work consensus, which requires sophisticated computer equipment to discover new blocks, LTC uses the Scrypt proof-of-work algorithm, which allows anyone to mine the cryptocurrency with consumer-grade technology.
The time it takes to confirm blocks also distinguishes Litecoin from Bitcoin. Block generation takes nine minutes for Bitcoin and two and a half minutes for Litecoin.
Litecoin acts as a “testnet” for Bitcoin's blockchain developments. The Lightning Network (a second-layer technology for Bitcoin to establish micropayment channels) was implemented by Litecoin before Bitcoin.
The end of 2017 saw Lee liquidate all of his Litecoin holdings, shocking the community. After reaching a high of $375.29, Lee was accused of manipulating the LTC market via his Twitter statements. Finally, he sold due to a conflict of interest.
In September 2021, a bogus press release announcing a cooperation between Litecoin and Walmart brought Litecoin into the spotlight. After the partnership was discovered to be a fraud, LTC's price rose 30%.
According to Crunchbase, Litecoin investors include Karnika Yashwant, CEO of KEY Difference Media, Arbi Khodagholian, CEO of Block Ventures, and individual investor Zachary Snader.
Mimblewimble, a cryptocurrency privacy system, is scheduled to enter the Litecoin network before the end of 2021.
Forks of Litecoin include Junkcoin (JKC), Monacoin (MONA), Litecoin Cash (LCC), CloakCoin (CLOAK), and Einsteinium (EIN) (EMC2). Lee has called any Litecoin fork a hoax.
Lee remains CEO of the Litecoin Foundation, which promotes and funds the Litecoin blockchain.
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