Litecoin

Created by John Powe in L Glossary 26 Nov 2024

Litecoin

Litecoin, or LTC, is also known as the first alternative cryptocurrency.

It was developed by former Google engineer Charlie Lee and launched on the 13th of October 2011, while claiming to be “the silver to Bitcoin’s gold”.

Litecoin runs on an open source blockchain in which every single node operator contains a copy of each blockchain. It differs from Bitcoin is certain aspects such as:

1. Faster transactions
2. Faster block generation
3. Use of Scrypt as proof-of-work algorithm
4. It was designed to produce four times as many blocks
5. It allows for four times the coin limit

Litecoin Explained

MIT graduate and former Google engineer Charlie Lee is the man behind Litecoin. LTC’s creation was announced on a Bitcointalk forum in 2011 and, at the time, Charlie Lee stated that he aimed at creating “a coin that is silver to Bitcoin’s gold”.

According to Mr. Lee, LTC began as a “fun side project” before evolving into what is now known to be.

Litecoin featured innovations such as a faster block propagation speed, the Scrypt hashing algorithm, and “premining”, which in simple terms was the ability for miners to start mining coins before the project’s public launch while at the same time working as a way of funding the projects development. 150 LTC were premined.

The source code and binary were made public a week before Litecoin’s launch, so that people could test it beforehand.

As for the launch, it was decided by popular vote on a Bitcointalk forum poll and the reward for mining one block was, at the time, 50 LTC.