What is Litecoin, and How Can I Trade It?

Bitcoin is widely regarded as the parent to all cryptocurrencies. It’s the first-ever crypto that made a breakthrough in the world of finance. However useful and novel, BTC wasn’t a very convenient crypto back in the day. It needed to scale better, improve transaction speed, and more.

Some people were able to see that BTC could be improved, and one of them was Charlie Lee. Lee was a Google employee who saw a huge opportunity to make a Bitcoin of his own. He simply called it Litecoin, the name implying the “lightness” of the cryptocurrency compared to BTC.

Nowadays, LTC is one of the most popular cryptos in the world. Let’s take a short overview of this digital currency.

The History of LTC

Litecoin’s official date of creation is October 7, 2011. This is when Lee launched an open-source GitHub client for it. The supporting network officially went live six days after that, on October 13.

Basically, LTC was a source-code fork from Bitcoin Core. The different thing was that Lee decreased the overall block generation time to 2.5 minutes. Besides, he increased the maximum number of coins that could be minted. Since then, some of the industry’s brightest minds have been working on improving the underlying technology of LTC. This keeps the cryptocurrency competitive.

LTC Price Overview

The first small influx of LTC buyers was recorded in 2014. Then, the price briefly increased to $20+. However, it quickly went down to approximately $3. It remained as such until mid-2017 when the first crypto craze started. The price hit its all-time high of $375.29 on December 19, 2017. Then, Bitcoin (and all other cryptocurrencies) was booming. Just two years before that, LTC had recorded its all-time low — about $1.11 (January 14, 2015).

The maximum LTC supply that can ever be issued is 84,000,000 LTC, and the current circulating supply is north of 66 million LTC.

The LTC trading activity started increasing in 2019. It has been traded well ever since. Like many other cryptocurrencies, LTC is pretty volatile. Since 2017, there have been several big ups and downs in its price, in addition to small changes happening all the time.

Crypto traders are aware of this fact. That’s what makes LTC a pretty useful coin for trading. It provides an opportunity to make a profit.

How to Trade Litecoin?

Trading Litecoin is easy. If you already have it and want to sell it, the best way to do so is via a decentralized exchange. You can convert just 1 LTC to BTC to try how these exchanges work. If you like them, you can proceed with an active trade. Make sure to follow the price changes of Litecoin to determine the best time to buy and sell the popular cryptocurrency.

Of course, you don’t have to trade LTC with BTC. You can trade it with any other cryptocurrency if you want. Still, the LTC/BTC trading pair is the most popular at the moment.

Final Thoughts: Litecoin in the Future

It’s very difficult to make any kind of prediction regarding the future of cryptocurrencies. Even though LTC is almost a decade old, it’s still considered pretty novel. The people behind Litecoin do their best to make it stay relevant, and tens of thousands of people actively trade or hold it. The future looks bright for LTC right now, at least the near future.