Litecoin is a cryptocurrency created by forking Bitcoin's blockchain.
Litecoin was launched way back in 2011 when the cryptocurrency industry was still in its early stages.
Litecoin is known as one of the earliest altcoins to have been created and is known to process transactions quicker when compared to its Bitcoin cousin.
What is Litecoin (LTC)?
Litecoin is an alternative cryptocurrency created by a former Google engineer, Charlie Lee. Similar to Bitcoin, Litecoin is an open-source payment network.
Litecoin was initially designed to help merchants accept payments at a faster pace. Just like Bitcoin, Litecoin was launched with a total supply of 84 million tokens.
The cryptocurrency has been dubbed as one of the earliest altcoins and has been used extensively by users as a testnet for Bitcoin due to the similarities that it shares with Bitcoin's blockchain.
Based on a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus, Litecoin verifies transactions through the mining process.
The procedure involves solving complex computational algorithms to create new blocks in the blockchain.
In recent years, PoW networks have drawn criticism due to their notoriously high energy usage and have compelled other blockchain networks like Ethereum, to switch to a more sustainable proof-of-stake consensus.
Litecoin is supported by its native LTC token, which can be used for staking purposes and to pay transaction fees when LTC users make peer-to-peer transactions on the LTC network.
Learn more about other cryptocurrencies: Quant (QNT), Chainlink (LINK), Polygon (MATIC), Evmos (EVMOS), Osmosis (OSMO), Shiba Inu (SHIB)
For more articles like this, take a look at our Planet Crypto page.