Litecoin (LTC)

General Data and Information. The Litecoin software was released on the 7th October 2011 by Charlie Lee, with the network going live roughly a week later on the 13th of October 2011. As a fork of Bitcoin Core, Litecoin featured several improvements upon the original Bitcoin protocol including reduced blocktimes (decreased to 2.5 minutes instead of 10 minutes), increased total supply and a different proof of work algorithm (scrypt vs SHA-256). The adoption of a faster blocktime meant that transactions were quicker to settle and be written into the blockchain, whilst the adoption of the memory intensive scrypt algorithm was intended to defeat the ASIC dominance of mining (due to the added financial costs of producing specialized mining machines with the required extra memory). However, due to the popularity of Litecoin, ASICs have been already developed and deployed that are able to mine the scrypt algorithm. Often considered to be the silver to Bitcoin’s gold status, improvements and upgrades are often rolled out to the Litecoin network before they reach the Bitcoin network (such as the SegWit and Lightning Network upgrades). This practice has also led to some people derisively calling Litecoin the test-network for Bitcoin. Milestones

7th October 2011 - Open Source software for Litecoin released. 13th October 2011 - Litecoin network goes live. May 2017 - Segregated Witness (SegWit) implemented. First Lightning Network transaction completed on the Litecoin network. Utility. Litecoin serves a similar use-case function as Bitcoin, attempting to be a digital store of value and medium of exchange but with the advantage of faster block times (which makes transactions faster to settle). In addition (due to lower network usage), it has lower transaction fees than the better known flagship crypto-currency. However, it suffers from a smaller market capitalization and liquidity which makes it much less useful as a pairing partner for other crypto-currencies

Significant Features. - Average Blocktime of 2.5 minutes; Total supply of 84 million LTC; Proof of Work consensus based on scrypt algorithm. - Transactions are pseduo-anonymous. Funds are sent address to address, but an owner identity can eventually attributed to an address given enough data and analysis. - Whilst sharing many decentralized attributes of consensus and governance as Bitcoin, Litecoin does have a known creator who can provide vision and guidance for the direction of the project. - Decentralized access allowing any party with the open-source software and internet access to send and receive Bitcoin irreversibly without third party interference or trust. - Decentralized governance via open-source development and forking. References: .

Litecoin has been the altcoin that remained in the top ten for the longest time which is a sign for stability.
Even though Litecoin has been around for a while, there are still more addresses with $1000 of BTC than there are with $1 of LTC. [1]
Usual fee prices are around $0.05, but on 24 May 2019 a user paid a 200 Litecoin fee which was valued at over $17’500.- [2]

3.7

Code development of Litecoin has come to a complete halt since February 2019. [1]

1.0

Litecoins goal is to be a storage value and to get accepted as a form of payment by many merchants. The founder of Litecoin called Litecoin the “digital silver” to Bitcoins “digital gold”. [1]

2.7

Litecoin was developed as a cheaper and faster alternative to Bitcoin. This has been achieved by using a Scrypt hashing algorithm instead of the common SHA-256 algorithm that’s being used by Bitcoin. [1]
On 16 November 2017 the Lightning network was introduced as a way to swap tokens of different blockchains. The first Lightning cross-chain swap was from Bitcoin to Litecoin. [2]

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The founder of Litecoin is Charlie Lee. He forked the code from Bitcoin in 2011 and started developing Litecoin very early. In January 2018 he tweeted that he had sold all his Litecoin, which caused the market price to drop. [1] [2]

2.7

Litecoin might stay in the top ten for a while, but there are not many attempts at creating demand for merchants to accept Litecoin as a form of payment thus Litecoin might most probably perish.

1.5

The last project (Litepay) was cancelled in March 2018. There are currently no projects in the planning. [1]

1.0

Litecoins potential could be big if a huge digital merchant or many smaller merchants chose to accept Litecoin as a form of payment as Litecoin is a better known cryptocurrency.

3.0

Litecoin doesn’t support private transactions and is being beaten by much faster coins. There are much better solutions for scalability, privacy and speed of transactions. The only argument might be the aspect of the store of value “digital silver”.

2.0

Coinbase (cryptocurrency exchange) and Visa launched the Coinbase card which can be used to spend Coinbase balances of Litecoin, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple. [1]

3.5

Litecoin has a very loyal community, but there’s not much incentive to create new applications or to start marketing pushes.

2.5

The Litecoin development is supported by the Litecoin Foundation. The current team consists mostly of members that are located in China. The founder Charlie Lee acts as the Managing director of the Litecoin Foundation. [1]

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