While many eyes are pointed towards the performance of Bitcoin, the crypto community sometimes forget about smaller cap coins, such as Litecoin. Recently, Litecoin hasn’t been making it to the headlines, because it’s not involved in scandals, disputes, it doesn’t have recent forks, and it’s creators are living a pretty low-key life. But Litecoin still has a strong community, and that’s more important for the coin.
In this article, we will be exploring the history and development of Litecoin and how it is still relevant today.
What are Litecoins?
Litecoins (LTC) were inspired by the inaugural cryptocurrency ‘Bitcoin’ and are a near-replica of it in many ways. It is a cryptocurrency designed for instant transactions with near-zero cost. When it was launched on October 13, 2011, it was widely considered to be the first alternative cryptocurrency, to be “the silver to Bitcoin’s gold,” and until today, is still one of the largest peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
Just like Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin runs on an open-source blockchain that isn’t controlled by any central authority. Every Litecoin node operator has a copy of each blockchain to ensure that new transactions do not contradict its transaction history, and miners help process new transactions by including them in newly mined blocks.
Both BTC and LTC can be mined, which can result in orphaned blocks. Orphaned blocks are formed when two miners mine a block at nearly the same time, both of which are initially accepted by the chain, which then rejects one. Segregated Witness (SegWit) is used to limit the number of orphaned blocks caused by the low block confirmation time.
Litecoin and Bitcoin do have a few key differences. Transactions are faster on Litecoin and the cryptocurrency has a larger supply. It uses a different hashing algorithm to keep mining fair for everyone, and these differences are believed to have helped LTC succeed and remain one of the top cryptocurrencies throughout the years.
Litecoins Timeline History
Litecoin was created in 2011 by Charlie Lee, a Google employee. It was a Bitcoin fork, but with a few differences. Lee wanted to create a similar network, aimed at fast payments. That’s why the block generation time for Litecoin is four times faster. Instead of 10 minutes, it takes only 2.5 minutes per block. Litecoin network uses a different consensus mechanism, called “scrypt,” which isn’t so demanding in terms of resources. Also, as it was supposed to be a cheap cryptocurrency, the maximum supply cap was raised to 84 million coins.
The idea of Litecoin quickly became popular. Miners liked it because they could mine it on their personal computers and laptops. Being one of the first Bitcoin forks and actually proposing some changes to the original code, Litecoin seemed like an independent currency, not standing on the primary currency’s shoulders. After some initial phase of development, Charlie Lee left Google and dedicated himself to full-time Litecoin development. Besides Lee, some other developers joined the project, and the coin got its development team.
Since then, Litecoin has experienced huge growth. During the cryptocurrency boom of 2017, during which the total market cap increased by more than 3600%, the price of Litecoin increased by 8200%.
Litecoin massively outperformed Bitcoin, which increased its value by less than 2000%. This seems to indicate that Litecoin might have achieved its original goal of improving on Bitcoin, and may even grow to overtake it in the years to come.
But what has the journey looked like so far for Litecoin? The following timeline outlines some of the major developments:
2009:
Bitcoin is founded, laying the foundations for Litecoin and other altcoins yet to come.
2011:
Charles Lee creates Litecoin by modifying Bitcoin’s code.
2013:
Litecoin’s market capitalization reaches $1 billion.
2013–2016:
Litecoin continues to develop and grow steadily
2017:
Segregated Witness is implemented into Litecoin and the first lightning transaction takes place.
In December, the price of Litecoin peaks at around $366 USD.
2018:
Litecoin prices begin to fall, mirroring the wider trend in the cryptocurrency market.
2019 — present:
Litecoin bounced back and remains one of the largest peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
What’s next for Litecoin
In 2018 the Litecoin Foundation acquired a 9.9% stake in German WEG Bank AG, and now they develop new Litecoin-based products thanks to this partnership. In May 2020, the Litecoin Foundation partnered with the legendary Atari to explore new ways to connect cryptocurrencies and gaming.
We can expect Litecoin to adopt more features in the future, partnering with different organizations to scale up the ecosystem and improve the community.
