Like most other projects that appeared in the early days of the crypto industry, Litecoin was just a branch (fork) of bitcoin with a slightly changed blockchain code. Nevertheless, in the first two years, it went from an unknown coin to the holder of the honorary title of “digital silver.
Creation of Litecoin
Litecoin was created by ex-Google employee Charlie Lee. The first version of Litecoin (0.8.5.1) was released on October 7, 2011. However, according to the statements of Charlie Lee, the official birthday of Litecoin is October 13.
Up to 2013, Litecoin cryptocurrency remained not very well-known, but in January it showed phenomenal growth – 20 times! By the end of November 2013, the coin had a market capitalization of $1 billion. Litecoin was seen as a cryptocurrency that could replace bitcoin if it depreciated.
Litecoin Technology
As mentioned before, the Litecoin cryptocurrency is a fork of Bitcoin, but Charlie Lee made changes to the code that allowed for faster, cheaper, and more secure transactions than bitcoin.
It does not exist to replace the first cryptocurrency, but to complement it. While bitcoin is referred to in the media as “digital gold,” Litecoin is called silver.
Litecoin transactions are much faster – while the first cryptocurrency would take half an hour or more, Litecoin transactions take about 3 minutes and cost less.
How do I get Litecoin?
Like most cryptocurrencies, Litecoin is available on almost all major crypto exchanges – you just need to register on an exchange to buy it.
It can also be mined. Unlike bitcoin, Litecoin uses a different algorithm for hashing information in blocks. Its main difference from the previous algorithm is that it doesn’t demand the speed of a computing device, but requires a lot of memory. As a result, Litecoin can be mined on a computer with the help of powerful video cards but it’s not as effective as mining other cryptos. Litecoin’s maximum number of coins is also much higher, making it much easier to mine than bitcoin.
Development Prospects
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 quite a “media” person, which contributes to the even greater popularization of his brainchild.
Also, Litecoin is widely used as a means of payment. At the moment, you can buy tickets, Amazon gift cards, food, and more with this cryptocurrency. One of the ambitious attempts to make LTC a mass payment means was the LitePay project (similar to BitPay), but the startup encountered difficulties and eventually closed this development.
As for the technological component, the Litecoin blockchain is still not the fastest, but it continues to improve. Thus, in 2017, two very important updates were made to the Litecoin network at once – Lightning and SegWit, which significantly affected its speed and throughput.
