The cryptocurrency market is a real wealth of various projects. It is hard to believe that its beginnings date back to barely 2008. You can read about this history in the article titled “What is Bitcoin (BTC)“. But how did it happen that the need for more projects than the mentioned king of cryptocurrencies arose? And which coin was the first altcoin? This is what we would like to tell you about in this post.
A brief history and the technical aspects of Litecoin (LTC)
If you’ve ever heard the term “Bitcoin’s little brother”, it most likely refers to Litecoin (LTC). It was created in 2011 and is based on the same principles as the oldest of the cryptocurrencies. The creator of Litecoin is Charlie Lee, who, based on the Litecoin Foundation, watches over the development of the project.
The first block of the first altoin was dug exactly on October 11. Like Bitcoin, Litecoin is based on proof-of-work consensus, and it also undergoes cyclical halving.
There are not many differences between the two cryptocurrencies, but we can see that the projected total market supply of Litecoin, is four times that of Bitcoin at 84 million LTC. Also, the block mining time is four times lower at 2.5 minutes.
Since there are so many similarities between the two currencies, it becomes puzzling why Litecoin was created at all. The answer is very simple – to make transactions faster and cheaper. Despite the fact that currently this coin has many competitors in the area of value transfer, it still enjoys a lot of trust thanks to the implementation of Lightning Network, among other things.
Price development of Litecoin (LTC)
The history of the price of Litecoin (LTC) seems to be a bit more interesting than the history of most altcoins. All this is due to the bursting of as many as two speculative bubbles on this cryptocurrency. One of them took place on November 28, 2013, when LTC was priced at $50.27. After that date, LTC fell into a classic consolidation preceded by a bear market, only to reach another All Time High on December 19, 2017. This time with a valuation of $355.50. As with most altcoins, LTC’s price action is highly correlated with Bitcoin’s price action. For this reason, when comparing the shape of the charts of both cryptocurrencies, 2018-2020, seem to be almost identical in their performance. However, at the time of writing this article, the older brother has been priced above its previous highs for quite some time. LTC, on the other hand, would need to rise as much as 60% in value to reach the 2017 ATH. Thus, one can see that despite many similarities, the demand for LTC is significantly lower.
Nevertheless, in its history, Litecoin has been in the TOP3 of cryptocurrency projects in the world for many years. Unfortunately, currently it has to contend with slightly more innovative projects, which are trying to push LTC even out of the top ten.
The possibilities of Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin (LTC) is a project that first and foremost has a reputation. Based on it, trust is built, which in turn translates into a community that supports the coin. Charlie Lee and his team of developers are constantly developing Litecoin. Nevertheless, one gets the impression that these efforts are among the slowest in the cryptocurrency space. Interestingly, this is not distracting investors at all. However, in order to keep it for longer, revolutionary changes may come in handy in the Litecoin space. We hope to see them, and that the oldest of the altcoins will maintain its high position in the rankings thanks to them.
