Litecoin

What it is

Litecoin is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies still in serious use. Charlie Lee, then a Google engineer, released it in October 2011 as a lighter companion to Bitcoin, and his description stuck for good: silver to Bitcoin’s gold. Where Bitcoin drifted towards being digital treasure to hold, Litecoin kept its focus on being money to spend, faster and cheaper. The memorable fact: it launched fairly, with the code published in advance and no stash reserved for its creator, a rarity then and now.

How it works

Litecoin is a close cousin of Bitcoin with three deliberate differences. Its blocks arrive every 2.5 minutes rather than every ten, so payments confirm about four times faster. Its supply cap is 84 million coins, exactly four times Bitcoin’s 21 million. And its proof-of-work mining, the competition among computers to add the next block, uses a different puzzle, called scrypt, originally chosen so ordinary computers could take part. New coins are created as mining rewards that halve roughly every four years, most recently in August 2023, with the next halving due in 2027. Since 2022 an optional upgrade called MWEB has let users make transactions with amounts hidden, a privacy feature users can choose rather than a default.

The story so far

Litecoin has often served as Bitcoin’s proving ground. It adopted SegWit, a significant technical upgrade, in May 2017, months before Bitcoin did, helping settle a fierce industry debate by showing the change worked. Dogecoin has been mined jointly with Litecoin since 2014, sharing its security. The project’s most debated moment came in December 2017, when Lee sold his entire Litecoin holding near the market peak, saying he wanted to remove any conflict of interest while continuing to lead development. Some praised the transparency; others noted the timing. The Litecoin Foundation, a non-profit, has stewarded the project since, through more than a decade in which thousands of louder coins appeared and vanished.

Where it stands

As of late July 2026, CoinGecko ranks Litecoin 27th by market value at about $3.6 billion, with the price near $46, roughly 89 per cent below its May 2021 peak of just over $410. About 77 million of the eventual 84 million coins are already mined. What to watch next: the scheduled 2027 halving, whether payment processors keep supporting LTC for low-cost transfers, where it has remained a workhorse, and whether MWEB adoption grows. Litecoin rarely leads the market in anything except endurance, but endurance is the rarest quality in crypto, and as of July 2026 it has more of it than almost anyone.