One of the main features of crypto is payment, or payment is a feature basis when forming a new economy. Litecoin was born to fulfil this need. Litecoin (LTC) is the peer-to-peer currency of the Internet and is decentralized similar to Bitcoin. It is the first cryptocurrency to implement the SegWit protocol. Charlie Lee, a former Googler, released Litecoin on October 7 2011, on the Github source code. His original goal was to create a lighter version of Bitcoin (BTC).

What is Litecoin (LTC)?

Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world. LTC is an open-source, global payment network that is fully decentralized without any central authorities. Mathematics secures the network and empowers individuals to control their own finances. Litecoin features faster transaction confirmation times and improved storage efficiency than the leading math-based currency. With substantial industry support, trade volume and liquidity, Litecoin is a proven medium of commerce complementary to Bitcoin.

Outstanding Features

What is the project trying to achieve?

Litecoin was designed to be used for cheaper transactions and to be more efficient for everyday use. In comparison, bitcoin was being used more as a store of value for long-term purposes. The coin limit market cap is much higher on LTC than bitcoin, and the mining process far quicker. This means transactions are faster and cheaper, although generally smaller in size. 

Like bitcoin, LTC is a form of digital money. Utilising blockchain technology, LTC can be used to transfer funds directly between individuals or businesses. This ensures that a public ledger of all transactions is recorded, and allows the currency to operate a decentralised payment system free from government control or censorship.

The two main differences are that Litecoin aims to finalize transactions faster and that it uses a different mining algorithm. On Litecoin, new blocks are added to the blockchain roughly every 2.5 minutes (as opposed to 10 minutes on Bitcoin).

What is the unique selling point?

Transaction Fee

While LTC requires more sophisticated technology to mine than bitcoin, blocks are actually generated up to four times faster. LTC also processes financial transactions a lot quicker, and can also process a higher number of them over the same time period.

Litecoin Maximum Supply

LTC was released with 150 pre-mined coins and has a total supply of 84 million coins. The cryptocurrency’s blockchain generates a new block every 2.5 minutes. The Litecoin supply is designed to reduce overtime to preserve the coin’s value. As of April 2022, there are 14 million Litecoins left to mine.

Litecoin Hashing Algorithm

The Skrypt algorithm allows transaction costs to be significantly reduced. LTC uses a hashing algorithm called Scrypt (pronounced es-crypt). Scrypt is more memory-intensive and slower than SHA-256. But it found greater acceptance in the cryptocurrency community after the 2011 Tenebrix project modified Scrypt to work with regular CPUs for mining.

Mining Rewards

Miners are rewarded in LTC for contributions. The halving event takes place every 840,000 blocks, roughly every 4 years.

Halving dates for LTC:

• Aug. 25, 2015: 50 to 25 LTCs
• Aug. 5, 2019: 25 to 12.5 LTCs
• Aug. 23, 2023 (expected): 12.5 to 6.25 LTCs

How is Litecoin Different from Bitcoin?

The first difference between Litecoin and Bitcoin lies in their maximum supply cap. Bitcoin has a supply capped at 21 million, while LTC’s supply is constrained to 84 million. 

Another distinction between LTCand Bitcoin lies in the protocols to mine coins. As mentioned earlier, Bitcoin uses SHA-256 and Litecoin relies on a modified version of Scrypt to generate coins. The difference in protocols has implications on transaction processing times for both coins. Litecoin is four times as fast as Bitcoin in processing and confirming transactions. 

The speed in processing transactions can come at the expense of security because fewer rounds of transaction verification are involved. LTC’s confirmation time of 2.5 minutes (as opposed to the roughly 10 minutes that Bitcoin takes to confirm transactions) is convenient for small merchants who do not want or need their transactions to be super secure.

Roadmap

The latest project which will be launching is MWEB (MimbleWimble via Extension Blocks). However, this code will need to go through rigorous review, and eventually be activated.

Next is LTC Core 0.21 release.

Then likely taproot activation. etc.

There are numerous other projects which they are yet to announce. For these they may have to collaborate with other businesses, so until everything has been confirmed, and a PR strategy is developed, it won’t be public.

More information at: CLICK HERE

Technical Data

Token Metrics

• Token Name: Litecoin
• Ticker: LTC
• Token Type: Utility
• Total Supply: 84,000,000 LTC
• Circulating Supply: 70,091,431.28 LTC (83%)
• Market Cap: $7,641,160,599

You can update the price of LTC Token on Coincu.com right at: CLICK HERE

Token Allocation

Litecoin initiated a 150 coin pre-mine, coins rewarded for mining the genesis block and 2 subsequent blocks, which were initially reserved for project development bounties. Its genesis block was on 10/7/2011.

Token Release Schedule

Litecoin was created as a clone of Bitcoin meant to have four times the supply, as well as generate blocks four times as fast. Bitcoin’s parameters were changed in order to achieve this, with the result that the eventual supply will top out at no more than 84 million coins.

On average, LTC generates new blocks every 2.5 minutes, rewarding miners with 12.5 new LTC and the total transaction fees from the preceding block. Each block has a 1MB limit and block rewards are halved every 840,000 blocks (approximately 4 years). Litecoin’s first halvings occurred on August 2015 and August 2019. The next halving will occur in August 2023.

Eventually, once the 84 million LTC hard cap has been reached, block rewards will transition entirely to transaction fees shifting the security model of the protocol to one based on demand for block space versus one based on demand for LTC. Similar to bitcoin, LTC’s supply dynamics are known with great precision, and the vast majority of all eventual coins will be minted in the first two decades.

Token Sale

You can trade LTC on CEX or DEX: Binance, FTX

Price today: $109.02

ATH: $412.96

More information at: CLICK HERE

Token Use Case

LTC is used as a native currency within the Litecoin network. LTC can be used for peer-to-peer payments and value storage within the Litecoin network. With its faster block times, Litecoin aims to offer higher on-chain throughout and quicker confirmation times than Bitcoin. However, similar to Bitcoin, Litecoin plans to ultimately scale using layer 2 solutions such as the lightning network.

Market and Community

Market

It is difficult to determine how investors, traders, cryptocurrency fans, governments, and the general public will treat LTC in the future. Cryptocurrency is being scrutinized by governments, more cryptocurrencies are being created every day, and the markets are volatile.

Community

LTC has 42K Followers on Twitter

Backers

Partners & Investors

Verdict

Whether LTC succeeds or fails as a cryptocurrency depends on a few factors. The rate of user adoption matters, and, if more people buy Litecoin either to transfer funds or as a store of value, then its value is likely to increase. Litecoin’s availability on several major exchanges is a plus for the coin.

But LTC doesn’t receive much media attention, and a cryptocurrency’s popularity plays a major role in its ability to gain value over time. Also, governments are still in the process of deciding how to regulate cryptocurrencies, and new regulations can lead to large price shifts for every cryptocurrency, including Litecoin.

With little in the way of competitive advantage, LTC may not be the best choice for investors. If you are interested in owning cryptocurrency as a store of value, then other digital currencies may be better options.

Find more information about Litecoin:

Website: https://litecoin.org/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LitecoinProject

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or ideas about the project, please email ventures@coincu.com.

DISCLAIMER: The Information on this website is provided as general market commentary, and does not constitute investment advice. We encourage you to do your own research before investing.

Alan

Coincu Ventures