Litecoin (LTC) is a P2P and open source project invented by Charlie Lee in 2011. The LTC token resembles Bitcoin in many ways, but has many distinct differences which has led market enthusiasts to dub it the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. 

Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin Core, and has a block generation time that is a quarter of Bitcoin’s, at 2.5 minutes and 4 times as many max tokens at 84 million tokens. It is also uses a different hashing algorithm that is more demanding of memory. 

Its mining algorithm requires processes to take place serially, which significantly reduces the advantage of those capable of purchasing ASIC hardware. The intention was to make mining as decentralized as possible, i.e. it makes the power to purchase expensive hardware less of a factor in determining mining capacity. Bitcoin, at this point, is well-known for its mining to be out of reach of most people. Litecoin is a financially lucrative alternative to the number 1 token in this regard.

LTC continues to be one of the most discussed and monitored cryptocurrencies still, years after its launch, a distinction not shared by many other cryptocurrencies. The quicker transaction processing times has led some analysts to believe that Litecoin will be a better alternative to Bitcoin in real-world applications, but scalability and performance improvements to Bitcoin (and Litecoin itself) could change opinions in the years to come. Founder Charlie Lee himself has said that Bitcoin does well as a store of value, while Litecoin is optimal for day to day transactions. 

In this tag, read Litecoin (LTC) news, price predictions, opinions and analyses created by users.