Litecoin LTC Definition, Current Price and How It Works

She is a financial therapist and transformational coach, with a special interest in helping women learn how to invest. Thankfully, unlike a few metrics, most market indicators looked optimistic. Both its Money Flow Index (MFI) and Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) registered sharp upticks. On top of that, our look at Glassnode’s data revealed that LTC’s reserve risk increased. For the uninitiated, high reserve risk indicates a situation in which confidence is low and price is high. For instance, the coin’s NVT ratio shot up sharply, meaning that LTC was overvalued.

Tools & Features

Litecoin (LTC) is a cryptocurrency that was designed to provide fast, secure and low-cost payments by leveraging the unique properties of blockchain technology. Litecoin is a cryptocurrency designed for peer-to-peer transactions. Ethereum is an ecosystem that runs on a global virtual machine that powers many different cryptography-based technologies. Ethereum has a token, ether (ETH), used to facilitate transactions within the Ethereum blockchain.

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The current price movement suggests the potential for a short squeeze. Short sellers typically borrow LTC tokens, selling them at a higher price with the expectation of repurchasing them later at a lower price to profit from the difference. Litecoin’s LTC/USD price has decreased 5.6% over the past 24 hours to $78.4, continuing its downward trend over the past week of -7.0%, moving from $84.92 to its current price.

Is Litecoin or Bitcoin better?

Like many forms of crypto, Litecoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer cryptocurrency; it was created from a fork in the bitcoin blockchain, the transparent, digital public ledger used by most cryptocurrencies. Litecoin was designed to enable almost instant, near-zero cost payments that can be exchanged between people or institutions worldwide. When compared to Bitcoin, which has a market cap about 33x bigger, Litecoin does pose several advantages. These advantages technically make Litecoin a better coin for the vast majority of small transactions. The cryptocurrency was created based on the Bitcoin (BTC) protocol, but it differs in terms of the hashing algorithm used, hard cap, block transaction times and a few other factors.

As of late October 2021, about 67 million Litecoins had been mined. LTC is simply another cryptocurrency that just so happens to prove its use-case as a low-cost decentralized peer-to-peer payment method. On a more controversial note, Charlie Lee reported that he sold all of his Litecoin holdings at the end of 2017. At the time, some community members had questioned his commitment to the project. This move was either pure genius or dumb luck from a trading perspective considering he timed the market to almost perfection.

Litecoin as a store of value

At its peak in December that same year it hit $371, correcting to $178 at the time of writing. Cryptocurrency, operating in the same manner as traditional, “fiat,” currencies https://www.tokenexus.com/neo/ can be used to pay for goods and services. Whether you’re looking for jewelry, clothing, or even luxury cars, there are many places you can spend Litecoin.

Litecoin for transactions

The crypto market is highly speculative and therefore highly volatile. As of June 2021, Litecoin was among the top 10 cryptocurrencies; as of October 2021, it’s nearing the bottom of the top 20. Given how swiftly things can change, this trend may not be an indicator of things to come, but it’s important for investors to bear in mind when considering litecoin as a speculative play vs. a store of value. When Litecoin was launched in 2011, it was one of the first altcoins and it was considered a worthy rival to Bitcoin, thanks to its faster transaction speed and overall efficiency.

How Is the Litecoin Network Secured?

• The current CoinMarketCap ranking is #20, with a live market cap of $5,871,661,310 USD.
• The edge Litecoin has over Bitcoin is that the payment transaction costs are extremely low, and it is capable of facilitating payments around four times as fast.
• There will never be more than 84 million Litecoins in circulation.
• In 2017, Litecoin adopted SegWit, and because of Litecoin’s similarity to Bitcoin, it worked as a testing ground or testnet for SegWit’s viability on the larger Bitcoin network.
• Unlike Bitcoin, which uses the SHA-256 PoW hashing algorithm, Litecoin uses the less resource-intensive scrypt PoW algorithm.

Instead, Litecoin must be purchased via one of the cryptocurrency exchanges, or through an online brokerage firm that offers crypto trading. Though Litecoin was initially a popular entry into the crypto category, it has gained and lost value over time, displaying a similar volatility to What is Litecoin many cryptocurrencies (or even certain stocks and bonds). As of October 25, 2021, Litecoin was worth roughly $195.13, with a market capitalization of $13.42 billion. These are just a few of the things you might hear getting tossed around when crypto enthusiasts talk about Litecoin.

• One key difference between your online bank account and cryptocurrencies is that they are (for the most part) entirely decentralized.
• Explore a few of our favorite cryptocurrency exchanges offering access to Litecoin trading below if you aren’t sure where to begin.
• Unlike traditional fiat currencies like the dollar or the euro, the litecoin supply is capped at 84 million.
• “Litecoin is the second-oldest cryptocurrency, forked from the Bitcoin protocol in 2011,” says Jay Blaskey, digital currency specialist at BitIRA.
• Although in theory Litecoin can be used for swifter payments, the reality is that the adoption of crypto as a universal means of payment and legal exchange is still up in the air.