Litecoin (LTC)

Litecoin (LTC) is a cryptocurrency created by Charlie Lee, a former Google engineer, and launched in October 2011 as a lighter, faster variant of Bitcoin (BTC). It runs on its own proof-of-work blockchain, produces a block about every 2.5 minutes, and has a fixed supply of 84 million coins. Its smallest unit is the litoshi, one hundred-millionth of a litecoin.

Litecoin began as a copy of Bitcoin's code with a few changes, which makes it one of the oldest altcoins still in wide use. It is often called the "silver to Bitcoin's gold". It should not be confused with Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which split from Bitcoin itself. Development is supported by the Litecoin Foundation, a non-profit based in Singapore.

Think of Bitcoin as a large bank vault that opens every ten minutes to record payments, and Litecoin as a smaller branch down the road that opens four times as often. Both keep the same kind of public record book and follow almost the same rules, but the branch processes payments sooner and has printed four times as many coins in total.

Anyone can help keep the record book by using computers to compete for the right to add the next page, and the winner earns new litecoins. Every four years or so the reward for each page is cut in half, so new coins arrive more slowly over time. People use litecoin mainly to send payments, pay merchants that accept crypto, and hold as a long-standing alternative to Bitcoin.

Lee released Litecoin on 7 October 2011, without a pre-sale or founder allocation. In 2017 Litecoin activated Segregated Witness, a change to how transaction data is stored, ahead of Bitcoin, and was used for early tests of the Lightning Network. In December 2017 Lee said he had sold or given away nearly all of his litecoin to avoid a conflict of interest. In May 2022 Litecoin activated MimbleWimble Extension Blocks (MWEB), an optional privacy layer; several South Korean exchanges delisted LTC soon after, citing rules on anonymous transactions. On 28 October 2025 the Canary Litecoin ETF began trading on Nasdaq, one of the first US spot funds for a cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin and Ether, launching the same day as a fund for Hedera. The fund holds litecoin with regulated custodians in cold storage.

Litecoin uses the same unspent transaction output model as Bitcoin, but miners solve puzzles using Scrypt, a hashing method that uses more memory than Bitcoin's SHA-256. Because Scrypt is also used by Dogecoin, many pools mine both coins at once through merged mining, which adds to the hashing power protecting each chain against a 51% attack. Faster blocks mean quicker first confirmations, though the block size and fees are similar in design to Bitcoin's. Mining difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks, about three and a half days, so that blocks keep arriving at the target pace however much computing power joins or leaves. Full nodes check every block against the rules, and anyone can run one on ordinary hardware, which keeps the ledger open to independent verification.

The block reward began at 50 LTC and halves every 840,000 blocks, roughly every four years, so total issuance approaches 84 million, four times Bitcoin's 21 million. The reward after a given number of halvings is:

• $R_{n}$ is the block reward in LTC after $n$ halvings.
• $n$ is the number of halvings that have taken place.
• $50$ is the original reward per block in 2011.

Halvings took place in August 2015, August 2019 and on 2 August 2023, so with $n = 3$ the reward is $50 \div 8 = 6.25$ LTC per block. The fourth halving, expected around mid-2027, will cut it to 3.125 LTC. As the reward shrinks, miners rely more on transaction fees.

• Payments. Litecoin's low fees and short block time made it a common choice for merchant payment processors and person-to-person transfers.
• Private transfers. MWEB lets users move coins into a confidential layer where amounts are hidden, a feature closer to a privacy coin than to Bitcoin, though use is optional.
• Investment. LTC is held directly and, since 2025, through US exchange-traded funds.
• Testing ground. Its similarity to Bitcoin has made Litecoin a place to try upgrades before they reach the larger network.

Critics argue that Litecoin offers little that Bitcoin, faster networks or stablecoins do not, and that its share of the crypto market has fallen since its early years. Development depends on a small team and on donations to the foundation. MWEB has improved privacy but brought regulatory pressure in some countries, much as exchanges have restricted coins such as Monero. As with any proof-of-work coin, mining is concentrated among large pools and specialised hardware makers.

• Litecoin
• Litecoin Core source code
• Faisal Khan: What is Litecoin (LTC)?