Litecoin LTC

About Litecoin

Founded two years after Bitcoin, Litecoin (or LTC, or Ł) has proven itself one of the most enduringly popular altcoins. Designed as a leaner, more agile currency, it can be traded more quickly than BTC, and there are a greater number of coins available.

The currency was invented in 2011 by Charlie Lee as a supplement to the main currency. Both BTC and LTC rely on a ‘proof of work’ system, whereby a single party proves to others that computational effort has been put toward a specific purpose. This effort is what prevents bad actors from taking over the network — the amount of work necessary would make such a think impossible.

• LTC is divisible into millilitecoins (mŁ), which are a thousandth of a single LTC, and microlitecoins (μŁ), which are a millionth.
• There can only ever be 84 million Litecoins. This is guaranteed fundamentally by the mathematics upon which the currency is based.
• A Litecoin block is mined every 2.5 minutes, releasing 25 new coins.
• Halving event occurs once every 840,000 blocks, which works out roughly once every four years.
• The transaction fee for LTC is just under $0.05, compared with more than $0.50 for BTC.

What determines Litecoin’s price?

Several factors inform the value of LTC. There are as follows:

Supply and Demand

Like that of just about every commodity, the Litecoin value is driven by supply and demand. If tomorrow investors were to want more LTC, then other investors would be able to charge more for it.

Halving

A feature common to both BTC and LTC is a regular halving of the reward meted out for new blocks. At the launch of the currency, those who successfully mined a new block were given 50 LTC. This was halved to 25 on August 25^th, 2015, and then again to 12.5 on August 5^th, 2019.

This event restricts the new supply of coins into the market. Reducing the new supply reduces the selling pressure as miners are given less and less LTC as a reward. As a consequence, halvings tend to drive the price of a coin up.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is so huge and influential that rises and falls in the price of the currency tend to have ripple effects across crypto as a whole. If investors are bullish about BTC, the chances are that LTC will feel the benefit, too. In fact, this is especially the case with LTC for two reasons; first, they are based on similar fundamental architectures; second, given that LTC followed swiftly in the wake of BTC, it’s probable that investors in LTC are also investors in BTC — and thus there’s a stubborn link between the two.

Litecoin Price History

At its inception, the price of Litecoin was negligible, sitting at less than $0.01. Over the period between 2011 and 2013, it steadily climbed to three dollars. It was then that the first bull run up to $50 arrived. This was small change, however, when compared with what was to come.

As part of a general surge in the price of crypto towards the end of 2017, the price of Litecoin recorded a new high in late December, settling on $360 and representing an 8200% increase, year-on-year. You can see a detailed history of the Litecoin price on our Litecoin chart.

Litecoin Price Prediction

It’s difficult to predict the future trajectory of any given cryptocurrency. Any of the predictions we offer here are speculatory and should not be interpreted as investment advice. Investment in Litecoin, like investment in any other commodity (digital or otherwise) carries the risk that you’ll eventually lose your investment. In the case of crypto, the value could theoretically slip to zero.

With that said, so far crypto in general has defied the naysayers and its value has compounded rapidly. This is true of every established coin. While there have been numerous altcoins that have emerged and collapsed, Litecoin has stood the test of time. It’s therefore reasonable to be optimistic.

Price Volatility

It’s reasonable to wonder why the price of LTC and other cryptocurrencies is so volatile. The answer largely lies in the size of the market. While about everyone in the United States owns at least some USD, just 10% of the population own BTC. For LTC, the figure is much lower than this. As a consequence, it takes only a few actors to start moving their currency to create sizeable change in price.

Crypto is still a recent innovation compared with alternatives like gold, though it shares many of the same theoretical features. As such, markets are more prone to becoming spooked, which helps to exacerbate large downturns in price.