Like most other projects that appeared at the dawn of the crypto industry, Litecoin was just a fork of bitcoin with a slightly modernized blockchain code. Nevertheless, in the first two years of its existence, it has gone from an unknown coin to the holder of the honorary title “Digital Silver”.
In addition, Litecoin became the first altcoin with a capitalization of $ 1 billion.
Today, despite the emergence of many more technologically advanced projects on the market, Litecoin is still one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, which is confirmed by its continued presence in the TOP-10 of the CoinMarketCap rating.
- What is Litecoin and the History of Creation
- Team
- Litecoin Technology
- Litecoin Rate
- Litecoin Wallet
- Where to Buy Litecoin
- Advantages and Disadvantages of Litecoin
- Litecoin Partners
- Litecoin Prediction
- Litecoin News
What is Litecoin and the History of Creation
Litecoin (LTC) is a decentralized payment system, the function of smart contracts, unlike the Ethereum cryptocurrency, is not developed, i.e. Litecoin is a digital decentralized currency for making secure payments without involving a third party as an intermediary (for example, a bank).
Litecoin was created by former Google employee Charlie Lee. The release of the client 0.8.5.1 (the first version of Litecoin) took place on October 7, 2011. The project code was published on the GitHub site. However, according to statements by Charlie Lee, Litecoin is considered October 13 as the official birthday.
Until 2013, the Litecoin (LTC) cryptocurrency remained a not very well-known Alcoin, but in January it showed just a phenomenal growth — 20 times! By the end of November 2013, the market capitalization of the coin was $ 1 billion. They began to consider Litecoin as a cryptocurrency that can replace Bitcoin if it depreciates.
Unlike most coins that have been created in the last three to four years, LTC tokens have not been issued through ICOs. Moreover, at the very beginning of the development, the Litecoin rival currency had neither a company nor even a team - the creator Charlie Lee was engaged in everything.
Team
The main Litecoin (LTC) team consists of only a few people:
- Charlie Lee is the creator and managing director. Born and raised in the African country of Côte d’Ivoire. At the age of 13, he moved to the United States, where he first received school education, and then graduated with a degree in Computer Science. After graduation, he worked in various IT companies, in 2007 he got a job at Google. In 2011, he created Litecoin, and in 2013 he went to work at one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase, while continuing to support his project. In the summer of 2017, he leaves the Coinbase exchange, where at that time he held the post of technical director in order to fully focus on the development of Litecoin (LTC) cryptocurrency;
- Xinxi Wang is a member of the board of directors. Singapore-based developer and crypto investor. He studied computer science at National University of Singapore. Doctor of philosophical science. Founder of the trading platform Coinnut. In the Litecoin team since April 2017;
- Franklyn Richards is a member of the Lightcoin board of directors. British developer. Participates in the development of another open source project Zulu Republic;
- Zing Yang is a member of the board of directors. She received a bachelor's degree from Singapore University of Management. Advisor open-source project Untitled INC. In the past, she held leading posts in companies such as East Ventures, Temasek.
The project is supported and developed by Litecoin Core, which also includes full time developers of Litecoin and specialists from the Litecoin Foundation. They all work on the technical development of the project, as well as advertising, marketing and popularization of Litecoin.
Litecoin Technology
Technically, the cryptocurrency Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin, however, Charlie Lee made changes to the code, which allowed for faster, cheaper and more secure transactions compared to Bitcoin.
Litecoin Hash Algorithm
Unlike Bitcoin, which uses SHA-256 to hash information in blocks, Litecoin uses a different encryption algorithm — Scrypt. Its main difference from the previous one is that it is not so much demanding on the speed of a computing device, but on RAM.
At the initial stages of Litecoin development, this Scrypt feature made LTC mining “ice resistant” — the early miners produced excellent coins using central processors and video cards. However, in 2014, everything changed after the mining giant Bitmain developed the ASIC miner for Scrypt.
Mining
The consensus in the Litecoin network, like Bitcoin, is achieved through the Proof-of-Work algorithm, that is, miners solve a complex mathematical problem for generating blocks and receive a reward for this, which simultaneously plays the role of issuing new LTCs.
Currently, the reward for finding nonce in the Lightcoin network and forming a block is 25 LTC. The amount of coins received as a reward is reduced every 840,000 blocks. Blocks are created every 2.5 minutes, which is four times faster than on a Bitcoin network. Emissions also occur four times faster.
Transactions
As mentioned above, the Litecoin blockchain is four times faster than Bitcoin, i.e. it is able to process one block in 2.5 minutes. The network speed (an indicator that indicates how many transactions per second the network can process) is about 56 transactions per second.
However, in early September 2017, the Litecoin cryptocurrency added support for the Lightning Network technology, which improved network scalability and made it possible to send LTC without having to pay a fee. A few months earlier, another soft fork was held — Segregated Witness (SegWit), which doubled the size of the block.
Another relevant technology that has been introduced into the operation of Litecoin transactions is atomic swaps. At the end of September 2017, cryptocurrency creator Charlie Lee announced the successful conduct of three cross-chain transactions at once: with Decred (DCR), Vertcoin (VTC) and Bitcoin (BTC).
In addition, Lightcoin developers were able to combine the capabilities of atomic swaps and smart contracts to send transactions, in which certain conditions are laid down.
So, Charlie Lee sent 10 LTC, which his partner received only after sending Lee in exchange for 0.1137 BTC.
This was possible due to the use of atomic swap in combination with a hashed contract that supports the option of temporary blocking (HTLC).
Also watch a video review of this coin, which will allow you to better understand the topic:
Litecoin Rate
LTC Market Rate
When it comes to the Litecoin exchange rate, this usually refers to the value of this cryptocurrency in US dollars or in its digital counterparts, stablecoins (USDT, BUSD, TUSD, etc.).
In addition, the Litecoin (LTC) rate can be viewed in the context of other popular trading pairs. For example, LTC / BTC or LTC / ETH, where the price is expressed in bitcoin or ether.
It should also be noted that Litecoin itself can act as a pricing currency — altcoins are traded on it on many exchanges. True, such trading pairs are not very popular with traders.
At the time of writing (04/03/2020), the Litecoin exchange rate is consolidating near the $ 40 level. Thus, Litecoin is now trading 9 times cheaper than its ATH ($ 370), reached in December 2017.
Litecoin Price (chart)
It is easiest to follow the Litecoin rate on a schedule that clearly demonstrates the ups and downs of this cryptocurrency. At the same time, you can find out not only the current cost of LTC, but also its price at any time in the past.
You can find the Litecoin chart on any cryptocurrency exchange that supports the trading of this asset or on the websites of analytical online services. For example, this is what the Litecoin exchange rate looks like on the CoinMarketCap chart for its entire history:
On it we see a line expressing the average market values of the fluctuations in the value of LTC. If you study the rate of Litecoin on the chart of any exchange, the information will most often be displayed in the form of bars or candles showing price changes for certain time periods.
The Litecoin chart also has some features that you need to consider when studying it:
- LTC first started trading on exchanges in 2013, so there are no charts with its exchange rate before April 13th (although the Litecoin network was launched in 2011);
- There is a strong correlation between digital “gold” and “silver” and If we compare the graphs of Litecoin and Bitcoin on the same CoinMarketCap, you can see that LTC as a whole repeats the movements of the "big brother", except with a slight delay.
Otherwise, the price movements of Litecoin, like any other cryptocurrency, are determined by the current ratio of supply and demand, the change of which in real time is displayed on the chart of the site used for trading.
Litecoin Wallet
The first thing a future Litecoin owner should do is find a place to store coins. There are usually no problems with choosing a wallet, as for for LTC fit:
- Hardware wallets — devices of Trezor or Ledger companies (the same nano S) are designed to store several hundred cryptocurrencies, including Litecoin. If you have a large amount of cryptocurrency and security comes first, then cold hardware storage is the best option;
- Multicurrency cryptocurrency wallets with Litecoin support — these include online services and applications for PC and smartphone. The coin is supported by Jaxx, Electrum (version of the wallet for Litecoin), Exodus and the same Block.io. Reviews on some of these wallets can be found on our website;
- Official LitecoinCore wallet — created by analogy with BitcoinCore and is the only official (!) wallet supported by the Charlie Lee team. To work, you need to download the full blockchain network, but its size is an order of magnitude smaller than that of Bitcoin, so the wallet will work fine even not on the most powerful PCs.
You can also use the service for generating paper wallets (liteadress.org). The site will generate a public and private key, as well as QR codes for quick scanning. Print a wallet and use the keys received to send and receive transactions. True, to perform operations, you will need a user interface in any case, so paper wallets have limited functionality.
Where to Buy Litecoin
Despite the fact that Litecoin is not the first or even the second cryptocurrency, even the 7th position on CoinMarketCap is enough to buy LTC on various services with almost no limits. Available for purchase:
- Exchangers — at Bestchange you can exchange Litecoin for other major cryptocurrencies or for fiat using payment systems, bank cards or online banking. In general, it is convenient and fast, but the course may differ from the current one + you need to pay a commission;
- Exchanges — at the same Binance Litecoin can be bought for fiat currencies, it is also traded in a pair of LTC / ETH, and BitMex offers a pair of LTC / BTC. The coin can be found on almost any platform, the only question is the number of trading pairs. However, buying Litecoin on an exchange requires registration and, as a rule, verification, which is longer and more complicated than through exchangers.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Litecoin
The Litecoin cryptocurrency is not much different and basically has the same pros and cons as digital gold. But there are several key features of this coin. The advantages of Litecoin are as follows:
However, there are also disadvantages:
Litecoin Partners
Cryptocurrency Litecoin is quite popular, so it has a number of partners. The most significant and influential of them are the following:
- HTC is a well-known Taiwanese company developing a blockchain smartphone HTC Exodus, which is expected to be released on October 22, 2018. LTC will become one of the available cryptocurrencies on the new device. In addition, Charlie Lee became an adviser to the HTC Exodus project;
- Gemini — an exchange created by the Winklevoss brothers, announced in mid-October 2018 that it was adding LTC to its platform. It is noteworthy that the leadership decided to take this step only after obtaining permission from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS);
- Robinhood — a popular US payment platform that 5 million customers use according to management, added support for LTC;
- TapJets — an American airline reservation service, added Litecoin as one of the available payment methods for services. The company noted that it considers LTC a safe and reliable cryptocurrency;
- Aliant Payment Systems — the company became the first processing for Litecoin cryptocurrency. Thanks to this collaboration, coin users have reliable and proven payment processing.
Litecoin Prediction
When in early 2019, Litecoin was trading at $ 30, and a trend reversal was observed in the market, it was promised a bright and cloudless future with new price records. The August Halving was expected to play a key role.
And the growth really happened — by the end of June for 1 LTC they gave $ 140. But then everything went not as expected. Repeating the movements of the main cryptocurrency exchange rate, the price of Litecoin went for a correction and in less than a month fell to $ 78. Then, on the eve of halving, the rate rose slightly - to $ 105.
Charlie Lee was sure that even with a reward of 25 LTC per block, miners will remain in the black due to rising costs. But immediately after the event (August 5), the Litecoin exchange rate continued to fall, which ended only at the end of the year at around $ 37.
In 2020, when the Litecoin rate rose to $ 82, the coin was predicted to temporarily decline to $ 50 and then increase to $ 100 and above. At the same time, it was assumed that halving really affects the course, but only in the long term, since the market needs time to respond to a decrease in supply.
However, these expectations were prevented from being realized by the greatest drop in the history of the cryptocurrency market — on March 13, the price of Litecoin in the moment dropped to $ 25. This was followed by a 2-week consolidation with a gradual "pull" to around $ 40.
It is not easy to predict what will happen next. Some see a bearish figure on the chart, in case of working out which the price of Litecoin may drop below $ 20. Others, on the contrary, expect the rate to return to the levels that were before the last fall, that is, at least to $ 60.
In any case, until Litecoin leaves the TOP-10 cryptocurrency rating and continues to be one of the most popular coins, it has every chance to restore former price heights and even achieve new ATH.
Litecoin News
Today, Litecoin has one of the most developed communities in the entire crypto industry and a leader in the person of Charlie Lee, who is a fairly “media” person, which contributes to the even greater popularization of his brainchild.
Also, things are going well with Litecoin as a means of payment. At the moment, you can buy tickets, Amazon gift cards, food, and much more for this cryptocurrency. One of the ambitious attempts to make LTC a mass payment tool was the LitePay project (similar to BitPay), however, the startup ran into difficulties and eventually shut down this development.
As for the technological component, the Litecoin blockchain is still far from the fastest, but continues to improve. So in 2017, two very important updates were immediately carried out on the Litecoin network — Lightning and SegWit, which significantly affected its speed and bandwidth. In addition, test transactions using atomic swaps were made, which proved the suitability of the LTC network for cross-chain payments.
In August 2019, at the same time as halving, the team introduced the updated Litecoin Core v0.17.1. The new version of the official desktop wallet has increased user privacy and reduced minimum transaction fees.
In late October, the developers published two offers at once to update the Litecoin protocol, which, among other things, provides for the integration of anonymous transactions using MimbleWimble technology. If these proposals are accepted by the community, confidential transactions will be available to everyone in the form of soft fork, i.e., if you wish, you can stay on the main blockchain without the possibility of using MimbleWimble expansion units.
In the early days of 2020, the Litecoin Foundation announced the selection of BitGo as its main custodial services provider. It is assumed that the developers will recommend this service to their large investors.
In late January, Charlie Lee offered the miners a scheme of material support for developers, which is based on the deduction of 1% of the blocks of awards received for the extraction of blocks. This proposal sparked a lively debate in the community. A few weeks later, the option of voluntary sending donations appeared in the settings of the oldest Litecoin Pool mining pool.
Around the same time, Litecoin holders got the opportunity to earn up to 10% per year by depositing its assets on the Cred cryptocurrency platform, and entered into a strategic partnership with the Litecoin Foundation.
Among the latest news about the brainchild of Charlie Lee — the emergence of LTC support in more than 13,000 South Korean ATMs, as well as the possibility of receiving free Litecoin by Google Chrome users who will make online purchases using the BitcoinRewards browser extension.
As you can see, the Litecoin team continues to work on all fronts, trying to expand the number of fans of its cryptocurrency, while not forgetting to improve the network with technological innovations.
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