Litecoin cryptocurrency overview

On October 13, 2011, Litecoin (LTC), one of the first and most popular forks of bitcoin, hit the market (more than two years after the oldest cryptocurrency).

Developer of Litecoin

Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer science graduate student Charlie Lee, a bitcoin maximalist, developed the coin because he was dissatisfied with the network's limited capacity and block generation rate (each block was generated every 10 minutes).

With all of bitcoin's flaws taken into account and an adequate dose of competition, Litecoin is an attempt to develop a more sophisticated (advanced) version of the currency.

In his spare time, Charlie worked on this project (he was working at Google at the time). Subsequently, in 2017, Lee opted to devote his entire time to Litecoin, resigning as CEO of Coinbase, the crypto exchange he joined from Google in 2013. He also established the Litecoin Foundation, which was registered in Singapore to further develop the Litecoin cryptocurrency. Previously, Charlie Lee sold all of his LTC coins so that no one could accuse him of having a conflict of interest or abusing his newly acquired position.

The Litecoin concept

Litecoin was designed to be faster, better, and more effective than Bitcoin at first, which was its basic premise.|Initially, the concept of Litecoin was very clear: this coin was supposed to be faster, better, and more efficient than Bitcoin.

The core Litecoin network employs the same consensus mechanism as Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work, however the creator chose Scrypt over the slower and simpler SHA-256 hashing algorithm. Litecoin miners were able to add blocks faster and claim rewards more frequently since blocks were formed every 2.5 minutes (four times faster than Bitcoin). In addition to this, Litecoin has a supply of 84 million coins, which is four times that of Bitcoin. The minting of the last LTC coin is scheduled for 2142, or about two years after the final bitcoin. As we can see, despite the fact that Litecoin has achieved its goal and is superior to Bitcoin in many ways, it has yet to surpass its adversary in terms of popularity. It was only beneficial for both coins that there was competition at the dawn of the cryptocurrency field in the 2010s.

Litecoin gradually incorporated smart contracts, its own L2 solutions, and other features, indicating that the network was upgrading and expanding to suit the new generation of assets.

After quite a few years, other coins had to catch up before they began to dethrone Litecoin from the list of the ten largest crypto assets (14th in the current ranking). With its value, which has always been two orders of magnitude lower than bitcoin's, and the frequent comparison of both assets throughout the years, Litecoin has been dubbed “digital silver” rather than “digital gold” as the original cryptocurrency has been.

Mining

It is currently advised to mine Litecoin using just ASIC hardware for the Script algorithm due to the mining process's ever-increasing complexity. Mining pool is the most popular style, with solo mining and cloud mining (which use more energy and are less profitable) coming in second and third, respectively.

86% of the total LTC supply has already been generated, and miners were rewarded 12.5 LTC for each block that was created. Nevertheless, in the summer of 2023, another halving will take place (yep, just like bitcoin), halving the payout and increasing the difficulty of mining Litecoin coins once more.

Trends in the development of Litecoin

Charlie Lee, the coin's founder, chairs the Litecoin Foundation, which was founded in 2013. He manages the asset's development and also supports any initiative of the crypto community.
            

1. Promoting network decentralization

Litecoin is a genuinely decentralized, peer-to-peer network with its own L1 blockchain and cryptocurrency that everyone may contribute to. To accomplish this, you must first download and install the necessary software for node deployment. The network becomes more decentralized as nodes increase in number and geographical scope.

Presently, the number of LTC wallets is approaching 10 million, indicating that the number of nodes is not far below this amount. The top ten “whales” control less than 18% of the market, while the top 100 control almost 45%. Yet, the Litecoin network's level of decentralization remains extremely high: the vast majority of coins – more than 68% – are held in the wallets of retail investors.

2. Wallets

Since Litecoin can be found on most exchanges, a large variety of universal wallets in various formats support it (hardware, cold, or hot). Litecoin developers also provide native non-custodial wallets for all preferences, including software wallets for all main operating systems, lightweight wallets (which do not keep the complete version of the blockchain), and mobile wallets for Android and iOS, such as Litewallet.

3. Layer2 solutions

In 2018, Litecoin developed a standalone Lightning Network akin to Bitcoin's. This is a Layer 2 solution aimed at resolving one of the primary issues with first-generation blockchains: scalability.

Lightning Network micropayments are based on smart contracts. There will be a significant difference in fees between this network and that of the main blockchain (although the fees for the main network cannot be considered excessive).

This solution also offers the possibility of atomic swaps between different blockchains.  

4. OmniLite smart contracts and asset tokenization platform

On the platform, you can:

• Create customized tokens for projects that can carry out transactions on the Litecoin network;
• Launch blockchain-based fundraising campaigns where users can sponsor certain projects by transferring their LTC tokens without any need to rely on a third party;
• Create NFTs (non-fungible tokens) on the Litecoin blockchain.

5. Payment card and merchandise store

The Litecoin Card debit card was developed in collaboration between Litecoin and Unbanked.With automatic conversion of LTC to fiat, the card enables users to make purchases at merchant locations just like a standard payment card (US dollar).Moreover, the card can be tokenized in Google Pay and Apple Pay wallets.Orders for the Litecoin Card are currently being accepted from residents of the US, UK, and 26 other EU countries.

Litecoin Card by Mastercard

Furthermore, supporters of the coin can buy any merchandise in the Litecoin Shop, an online store.

Litecoin announces its own online merchandise store

Investors

A significant number of institutional investors (investment and hedge funds) hold Litecoin in their portfolios, including Asymmetry Asset Management (South Africa), Block Ventures (USA), Bluefin Berkeley (UK), Digichain Capital (Australia), Galaxy Digital (USA), Parallax Digital (USA), CypherMines (Cayman Islands), Kenetic Capital, etc.