Litecoin (LTC) Live Price

Litecoin (LTC) was originally developed as an alternative to Bitcoin (BTC) that would be easier for non-specialist computer hardware to mine. Lite Coin the cryptocurrency was launched in 2011 as a fork to the Bitcoin Core client with a lower block creation time, higher number of overall coins and a different system for hashing the blockchain. The value of Litecoin (LTC) increased dramatically in 2013, and it has been in and out of the top 5 digital currencies by market cap for many years.

Litecoin is designed to operate very similarly to Bitcoin, expect with faster transactions and a mining process that is more difficult to create cost-effective specialized hardware for. Therefore, Litecoin is seen as a more user-friendly version of Bitcoin intended for smaller scale users, both in terms of transactions and mining. This philosophy is in keeping with the original vision of cryptocurrency as a small-scale decentralized form of transacting that is universally accessible.

Litecoin was the first major cryptocurrency to adopt the SegWit protocol and the associated Lightning Network, both intended to promote more transactions taking place 'off-chain', thereby allowing the underlying blockchain to operate more effectively. While the Lightning Network has yet to be effectively adopted, optimists believe that it can dramatically increase the speed and lower the transaction costs of using Litecoin for peer-to-peer transactions.