Litecoin is a popular cryptocurrency that has been around for some time. One notable feature about it is that it is a modified copy of Bitcoin. After reading this article you will know more about Litecoin.

What is Litecoin?

In short answer, Litecoin is a cryptocurrency. Some call cryptocurrencies, magic internet money. Let’s begin with cryptocurrency, what exactly is a cryptocurrency?

We cover what a cryptocurrency is in an article about Bitcoin. This article has a detailed explanation about features of a cryptocurrency is. You can read it to understand what a cryptocurrency is to its fullest extent

In summary, a cryptocurrency is a currency on the internet that is not able to be duplicated. It is a currency that is secured by cryptography. Most cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, are not able to be created out of thin air. They are decentralized, transparent and opensource.

The Beginnings of Litecoin

Litecoin was first launched in October of 2011. It uses almost the same structure that Bitcoin uses. The altcoin was developed by former Google Engineer, Charlie Lee. Charlie described Litecoin as the “lite” version of Bitcoin. In today’s regard it is often referred to as the digital silver to Bitcoins’ digital gold.

As previously said, Litecoin which started in 2011, started out as a Bitcoin fork. Compared to Bitcoin, it has small differences we illustrate later in this article. The main feature of Litecoin is that it was faster at processing transactions in comparison to Bitcoin. This is because its block time is 2.5 minutes as opposed to Bitcoin’s 10-minute block time.

Litecoin’s founder, Charlie Lee sold all of his holdings in the peak of the 2017 bull market. This caused controversy. To the community it seemed like Charlie had lost his belief in Litecoin. Charlie, however, is still involved with the Litecoin foundation today.

Litcoin Vs. Bitcoin

Litecoin is almost always compared to Bitcoin. Litecoin is nearly identical, it has minor changes.

Firstly, Bitcoin’s hashing algorithm is the SHA-256 algorithm, where as Litecoin uses the scrypt hashing algorithm. Litecoin block time is also 2.5 minutes compared to Bitcoin’s 10-minute block time.

We present a cross comparison between bitcoin and Litecoin in the figure below.

Litecoin's Adoption

Litecoin has seen tons of adoption by the world. Litecoin is available for purchase in most of the best crypto exchanges. There are also tons of companies that accept Litecoin as a payment for goods and services.

Litecoin’s foundation also has made great progress. In 2018, the foundation bought a stake in a German bank. They continuously develop products associated with Litecoin.

The foundation, later in May of 202, also partnered with Atari, a gaming company in an attempt to connect crypto with gaming.

One of the interesting aspects of Litecoin is that many cryptocurrencies have forked from it. Dash, Monacoin and Einsteinium for example are some of these.

Litecoin is supported by all the major hardware wallets

Litecoin is also supported by software wallets. These are applications for both desktop and mobile devices.

Litecoin’s Roadmap (What Does the Future Hold for Litecoin?)

The Litecoin foundation has a roadmap even though they don’t publicly display it or advertise it. They always post recent development news on their website. For example, at the time this article was written, the foundation illustrated some achievements. One of these achievements includes how Newegg added Litecoin as a payment option with the help of Bitpay.

The team is currently working on a project called MWEB (MimbleWimble via Extension Blocks). The team finally achieved a final working version of this. Unfortunately, the developers stated that the project would undergo rigorous testing before it goes live.

MWEB is an upgrade that will improve Litecoin’s privacy. It also helps with fungibility. According to the foundation’s website, these are key features that Litecoin is lacking. This project is part of Litecoin’s roadmap.

The Litecoin team plans to work on Litecoin Core 0.21 afterwards. And after this they plan on integrating Taproot Activation

Taproot is an upgrade that introduces a new scripting language called Tapscript. This improves smart contract flexibility whilst offering more privacy features. Taproot is a protocol that has been adopted by Bitcoin through a soft fork. It has yet to be introduced into Litecoin, however.

Hopefully you learned something new from this article. If you would like to support us, you can do so by sharing this article with a friend. Follow us on our socialmedia for more content!