Why Is Litecoin Important?
Released on October 7, 2011 by a former employee in Google named Charlie Lee, Litecoin is an open source, peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. It is a digital currency that operates independently of any country’s central bank.
Despite its similarity to Bitcoin in many ways, Litecoin has also incorporated a lot of features (such as Segregated Witness) whose main goal is to reduce bottlenecks in the network as well as increase the speed with which transactions are carried out.
The best way to picture Litecoin LTC is as the digital silver to Bitcoin’s digital gold. The founder of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, wanted to modify Bitcoin’s rules in ways that he considered beneficial. He wanted to reduce the amount of time required to confirm new transactions but also change the Bitcoin mining algorithm and ensure that anyone could participate in the network. This is why Litecoin’s transaction confirmation time is 2.5 minutes compared to Bitcoin’s 10 minutes. From this perspective, Litecoin is also able to process a higher volume of transactions.
This is how Litecoin experienced significant growth since its inception and how it reached a $1 billion market cap in November 2013, and over four times this much in 2017.