{"id":37207,"date":"2017-12-15T13:00:57","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=37207"},"modified":"2025-08-29T13:52:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T10:52:09","slug":"what-is-litecoin-ltc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/what-is-litecoin-ltc\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Litecoin (LTC)?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"cards_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"single_card\">\n<p id=\"card_counter_1\" class=\"card_counter\"><span class=\"card_counter_span\">1<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>What is Litecoin?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Litecoin is a global, decentralised, peer-to-peer payment network built on Bitcoin\u2019s source code, with a native currency of the same name (Litecoin, ticker LTC).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">It was launched in October 2011 by its creator and developer, Charlie Lee, who sought to improve the first cryptocurrency by using a different mining algorithm and shortening transaction-confirmation times. The code of this \u201cdigital silver\u201d project was released under the permissive MIT\/X11 licence, allowing it to be modified, copied and redistributed in altered form.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Recently, Lee said in an interview that he started Litecoin &#8220;just to have fun&#8221; and did not expect it to succeed. He considers it slightly less secure and decentralised than Bitcoin, yet attractive thanks to lower fees, high speed and greater network throughput. Lee believes Bitcoin will increasingly be seen as a store of value, with Litecoin used for small payments.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZHYQGdyJuuU?start=177\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"single_card\">\n<p id=\"card_counter_2\" class=\"card_counter\"><span class=\"card_counter_span\">2<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>How does Litecoin differ from Bitcoin?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"card_description\">\n<p>In essence, Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin. Its lighter-weight network allows transactions to be confirmed four times faster than on Bitcoin\u2019s blockchain. Both systems use the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, but Bitcoin employs the SHA-256 hashing algorithm, whereas Litecoin uses Scrypt, which requires more RAM but is easier to set up.<\/p>\n<p>Bitcoin\u2019s supply is capped at 21m coins; Litecoin\u2019s at 84m. A Bitcoin address has 26\u201335 characters and starts with the digit 1 or 3, while a Litecoin address consists of 33 characters, is derived from a public key using SHA-256 hashing, and begins with the letter L or the digit 3 (after SegWit activation in 2017, this second type began with the letter M).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"single_card\">\n<p id=\"card_counter_3\" class=\"card_counter\"><span class=\"card_counter_span\">3<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>How to buy Litecoin?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"card_description\">You can buy Litecoin on cryptocurrency exchanges, peer-to-peer or via exchangers (which is less secure), or with a credit card directly on Litecoin.com.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"single_card\">\n<p id=\"card_counter_4\" class=\"card_counter\"><span class=\"card_counter_span\">4<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>What is Litecoin mining difficulty?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"card_description\">Every 2,016 blocks (about every four days) the Litecoin network automatically adjusts the parameter that reflects the amount of computation needed to find a new block\u2014that is, the mining difficulty. This is to keep block creation around 2.5 minutes despite changes in mining power.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"single_card\">\n<p id=\"card_counter_5\" class=\"card_counter\"><span class=\"card_counter_span\">5<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>How to mine Litecoin?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"card_description\">\n<p>Until 2014, when Chinese mining giant Bitmain introduced an ASIC miner for the Scrypt algorithm, Litecoins could be mined with central (CPU) and graphics (GPU) processors. LTC can be mined using the project\u2019s official wallet or specialised Scrypt-based software.<\/p>\n<p>Given that the computational difficulty is higher than when mining Bitcoin and that rewards for miners have recently fallen, earning money from Litecoin mining today is extremely difficult without a specialised farm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"single_card\">\n<p id=\"card_counter_6\" class=\"card_counter\"><span class=\"card_counter_span\">6<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>What is the Litecoin halving?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"card_description\">\n<p>In early August 2019, at block 1,680,000, the Litecoin network underwent its second halving\u2014cutting the block reward from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC. As Charlie Lee explained, this should prevent LTC\u2019s price from turning down.<\/p>\n<p>The next such reduction is planned for August 2023.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"single_card\">\n<p id=\"card_counter_7\" class=\"card_counter\"><span class=\"card_counter_span\">7<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Who develops the Litecoin network?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"card_description\">\n<p>In the early days, all work on developing the Litecoin network was done by its creator, Charlie Lee. At the same time he worked at Google and, from 2013, at the American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, devoting himself fully to the project only from the summer of 2017.<\/p>\n<p>That year he created the non-profit Litecoin Foundation in Singapore and became its managing director, sharing board seats with developer and crypto investor Xinxi Wang, British developer Franklin Richards and project manager Zing Yang. The Litecoin Foundation financially supports the Litecoin Core developer team, which includes project developers and several Foundation specialists.<\/p>\n<p>In December 2017 Charlie Lee sold all the Litecoins he owned in favour of the Litecoin Foundation, explaining that he wanted to reduce his influence on the community, the market and the cryptoasset\u2019s price.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"single_card\">\n<p id=\"card_counter_8\" class=\"card_counter\"><span class=\"card_counter_span\">8<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Why did Litecoin need the SegWit fork?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"card_description\">\n<p>Segregated Witness (\u201cdetached witness\u201d, SegWit) allows the block-size limit to be altered by removing signature data from transactions. The SegWit soft fork was originally intended to increase Bitcoin\u2019s throughput. In April 2017 Litecoin did not need such a fix, yet the upgrade was activated on its network first.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, the effective block size doubled. In addition, some experts believe the upgrade made Litecoin more adaptable than Bitcoin and prepared LTC for the rollout of the Lightning Network, which allows coins to be sent without fees. As Charlie Lee later said, his project effectively helped Bitcoin test SegWit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1 What is Litecoin? Litecoin is a global, decentralised, peer-to-peer payment network built on Bitcoin\u2019s source code, with a native currency (Litecoin, ticker LTC). It was launched in October 2011 by its creator and developer, Charlie Lee, who sought to improve the first cryptocurrency by using a different mining algorithm and shortening confirmation times. The code of this \u201cdigital silver\u201d project was released under the permissive MIT\/X11 licence, allowing modification, copying and redistribution of altered versions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"1","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"human_written","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2113],"tags":[2117,20,209],"class_list":["post-37207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptorium","tag-101-altcoins","tag-altcoins","tag-litecoin"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"90","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37209,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37207\/revisions\/37209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}