Happy Birthday, Litecoin!
Litecoin was launched on Oct 13, 2011. Happy 9th Birthday, Litecoin!
Creator Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) tweeted the following price breakdown an hour ago to illustrate its growth:
While Bitcoin was developed by an anonymous person or team using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, Litecoin was developed by computer scientist Charlie Lee, a.k.a. SatoshiLite. Lee was previously employed by Google and Coinbase but now works fulltime as managing director of the Litecoin Foundation.
While most fiat currency is divided up by hundreds — 100 pennies in a dollar, 100 pence in a pound, 100 euro cents in a euro — the crypto world makes things a little more complicated.
Instead of being divided into 100, a Bitcoin is divided into 100 MILLION (100,000,000) Satoshi, which are of course named for Satoshi Nakamoto. Litecoin follows suit, with one Litecoin being equal to 100 million (100,000,000) Litoshi. That’s 8 zeros.
1 BTC = 100,000,000 Satoshi
1 LTC = 100,000,000 Litoshi
Or, on the flipside, 1 Satoshi is 0.00000001 Bitcoin and 1 Litoshi is 0.00000001 Litecoin. That’s 8 decimal places.
1 Satoshi = 0.00000001 BTC
1 Litoshi = 0.00000001 LTC
Bitcoin can’t be divided up smaller than a Satoshi and Litecoin can’t be divided up smaller than a Litoshi.
Litecoin operates in a similar manner to Bitcoin, but is designed to be “lighter.” It’s been called the “silver” to Bitcoin’s digital “gold.” Litecoin is 4 times faster to validate than Bitcoin (2 ½ minutes instead of 10), and 4 times more coins will be minted (84 million instead of 21 million).
Since Litecoin has a faster transaction time, it’s much more suitable for everyday purchases than Bitcoin.
The Litecoin project was a software fork using code from Bitcoin. That means its project code was copied from Bitcoin and then modified.
But here’s where it gets confusing: Litecoin isn’t a hard fork, nor a soft fork of Bitcoin because the fork wasn’t created as an update and split off the main blockchain. It’s also not a chain split because they don’t have a common ancestor.
Because of this, most people don’t refer to Litecoin as a fork of Bitcoin. BTC’s code was borrowed, copied and modified … but the blockchain was not forked.
You probably know that Bitcoin (BTC) miner rewards are halved every 4 years or so, which is every 210,000 blocks. Well, Litecoin (LTC) has its own halvening – every 840,000 blocks, which also works out to every 4 years or so!
The last BTC halvening, from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC, occurred in May 2020. The last LTC halvening, from 25 to 12.5 LTC, occurred in August 2019. All BTC will be mined around 2140 and all LTC will be mined in 2142.
Did you know that you can buy and sell Litecoin, as well as Bitcoin (and 29 other altcoins) at any Coin Cloud Bitcoin ATM? All you need is some cash to trade in, and you can be participating in the digital economy … stat (or, well, in 2.5 minutes if you choose Litecoin … and 10 minutes if you choose Bitcoin!)
Disclaimer: The information and views supplied on the Coin Cloud blog are for educational and entertainment purposes only. We are not financial advisors, so please do your research and consult with a trusted financial specialist before investing your money.
Founded in 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada, Coin Cloud is the leading digital currency machine (DCM) operator. With over 4,500 locations nationwide, in 48 states and Brazil, Coin Cloud operates the world’s largest and fastest-growing network of 100% two-way DCMs, a more advanced version of the Bitcoin ATM. Every Coin Cloud DCM empowers you to quickly and easily buy and sell over 40 cryptocurrency options with cash.
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