About Litecoin (LTC/USD)
Litecoin was released in October 2011 by Charlie Lee, then an engineer at Google, and is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies still in continuous operation. It began as a fork of the Bitcoin codebase with a small number of deliberate parameter changes: a target block time of roughly two and a half minutes rather than ten, a maximum supply of 84 million coins rather than 21 million, and the Scrypt hashing algorithm in place of SHA-256. The stated intention was a network better suited to smaller, more frequent payments, which is the origin of the long-standing description of Litecoin as silver to Bitcoin’s gold.
Those choices have proved durable. Litecoin has never rebranded, never migrated to proof-of-stake, and has kept a conservative development posture, taking changes from Bitcoin’s codebase rather than diverging sharply from it. Its supply schedule mirrors Bitcoin’s, with the block reward halving at fixed intervals, and it has often been used as a proving ground for changes later adopted more widely.
What Moves Litecoin?
Bitcoin’s direction
Litecoin is closely tied to Bitcoin. Its supply mechanics, its mining model and its investor base overlap heavily, and in practice broad moves in Bitcoin tend to carry the older proof-of-work coins with them. This relationship is a starting point rather than a rule, and our own correlation figures are measured from daily closes rather than assumed.
Halving cycles
The block reward halves on a fixed schedule, reducing the rate of new supply. Because the schedule is public and known years ahead, the interest it generates tends to build over time rather than arriving on the day.
Payments and merchant use
Litecoin’s original purpose was transactional, and its relevance depends partly on whether low-value on-chain payments are being used at all. Activity here competes with layer-two networks built on other chains, and with stablecoins, which now carry a large share of on-chain payment volume.
Mining economics
As a proof-of-work coin, Litecoin’s security budget depends on miner revenue. Scrypt mining is frequently merged with Dogecoin, so conditions in one affect the other.
Trading Litecoin (LTC/USD)
Litecoin trades continuously, and the price shown on this page is taken from our own market feed. The chart, the 52-week range and the performance figures are measured from our own daily closes; where we do not have enough history to measure something, we do not show it. Nothing on this page is a recommendation or a forecast β see our methodology for how each figure is produced.