Litecoin (LTC) is an altcoin that was founded in 2011 by former Google engineer Charlie Lee. It aims to be a lite version of bitcoin that enables almost instant and low-cost payments.
Litecoin adopted bitcoin’s code and some features in its blockchain, but it prioritized transaction confirmation speed to facilitate higher transactions per second (TPS) and shorter block generation times.
Because of its similarity to bitcoin, the Litecoin blockchain has been used as a testing ground for developers to experiment with the technologies they want to apply to bitcoin.
For example, Segregated Witness (SegWit) and the Lightning Network were run on the Litecoin blockchain before bitcoin.
Litecoin has a total supply of 84 million. Similar to bitcoin, it is deflationary in nature and halved every 840,000 blocks (approximately every 4 years).
The next stop is expected in August 2023. Litecoin can be purchased on various cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance.
Litecoin (LTC) Introduction
Litecoin (LTC) is one of the oldest of all altcoins on the market. When it was first introduced in 2011, Litecoin was branded as “the silver to bitcoin’s gold” for its blockchain was largely based on Bitcoin’s code.
While some crypto investors view Bitcoin as a good store of value, Litecoin is often seen as a better option for peer-to-peer payments due to its lower confirmation time and transaction fees.
Litecoin (LTC) is one of the first altcoins. Created in 2011 by former Google engineer Charlie Lee, its blockchain was developed based on the open-source code of bitcoin.
But Litecoin introduced some modifications, such as a faster block generation rate and a different Proof of Work (PoW) mining algorithm called Scrypt.
Litecoin has a limited total supply of 84 million. Similar to bitcoin, Litecoin can be obtained from mining and has a halving mechanism that occurs every 840,000 blocks (approximately 4 years).
The last LTC halving took place in August 2019, when the block reward was halved from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC. The next stop is expected in August 2023.
Litecoin Price Prediction 2022 to 2025
Once a new all-time high is set and the reversal begins, another bear market starts. Litecoin could fall back to retest the former bull market peak and current consolidation level as the next bear market bottom.
| Year | Potential High | Potential Low |
| 2021 | $740 | $120 |
| 2022 | $2170 | $359 |
| 2023 | $1247 | $178 |
| 2024 | $9867 | $978 |
| 2025 | $12344 | $1298 |
How does Litecoin work?
As a modified version of bitcoin, Litecoin was designed to facilitate cheaper and more efficient transactions than the bitcoin network.
Like Bitcoin, Litecoin adopts a proof-of-work mechanism to enable miners to earn new coins by adding new blocks to their blockchains.
However, Litecoin does not use Bitcoin’s SHA-256 algorithm. Instead, LTC uses Scrypt, a hashing algorithm that can generate new blocks approximately every 2.5 minutes, while Bitcoin block confirmation times take an average of 10 minutes.
Scrypt was initially developed by the Litecoin development team to move their own decentralized mining ecosystem away from the bitcoin system and to make the 51% attack on LTC more difficult.
In the early days, script allowed mining more easily accessible to those who used traditional GPU and CPU cards.
The goal was to prevent ASIC miners from dominating LTC mining. However, ASIC miners were later developed to mine LTC efficiently, making GPU and CPU mining obsolete.
As bitcoin and litecoin are somewhat similar, litecoin was often used as a “testing ground” for developers to experiment with the blockchain technologies adopted on bitcoin.
For example, Segregated Witness (SegWit) was adopted on Litecoin before Bitcoin in 2017. Proposed for bitcoin in 2015, SegWit aims to scale the blockchain by separating the digital signature from each transaction in order to make better use of the limited space on the block.
This allowed the blockchain to process more transactions per second (TPS).
What are Litecoin Use Cases?
As one of the first altcoins, Litecoin improved Bitcoin’s code to increase its scalability for faster transactions and lower fees. Despite not being able to compete with bitcoin in terms of market cap, it has a competitive advantage as a peer-to-peer payment system.
In fact, the Litecoin Foundation announced in November 2021 that LTC can be used as a payment method via the Litecoin Visa Debit Card by converting LTC to USD in real time.
In addition, some businesses have added Litecoin as a payment method, which has spread to travel companies, convenience stores, property agencies, and online stores.
Another thing to note is the highly anticipated MimbleWimble release on the Litecoin network. Not only can MimbleWimble obfuscate wallet addresses in transactions, but it can also potentially double Litecoin’s TPS.
If implemented successfully, the upgrade could further enhance the privacy and optionality of LTC transactions. However, there is no fixed release date on the main net until December 2021.
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What is the difference between Litecoin and Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is the original, first cryptocurrency. It has been around longer than any other coin and has the largest share of the market (although shrinking in recent periods).
Litecoin came into existence because people were upset that their CPUs could no longer do bitcoin (remember? The mining hierarchy mentioned above…).
Litecoin has stepped up and is backed by GPU miners.
Litecoin fans like to call it “Silver to Bitcoin Gold”, as it will allow more Litecoin to be mined and its blocks are generated 4x faster, making it easier and faster for day-to-day transactions. goes.
