Litecoin

Litecoin was created in October 2011 by Charlie Lee, a former Google engineer who went on to become Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Lee launched Litecoin as a 'lighter' alternative to Bitcoin — technically a Bitcoin fork with several parameter changes, but philosophically a project that took Bitcoin's design and optimised it for everyday payments rather than long-term store-of-value. It was one of the earliest altcoins, predating Ethereum by several years, and remains one of the most durable payment-focused blockchains still in active use.

Litecoin processes blocks every 2.5 minutes compared to Bitcoin's 10-minute target, producing four times as many blocks per unit of time and giving users a first confirmation roughly four times faster. It uses the Scrypt hashing algorithm instead of Bitcoin's SHA-256, which was originally intended to make mining more accessible to individuals using consumer-grade hardware — although in practice ASIC miners were built for Scrypt within a few years, so Scrypt no longer meaningfully democratises mining. Litecoin also has a larger maximum supply of 84 million coins — exactly four times that of Bitcoin — with the same halving schedule scaled proportionally so its total emission mirrors Bitcoin's.

Despite the emergence of thousands of newer cryptocurrencies, Litecoin has maintained its position as one of the most widely adopted payment-focused blockchains. It was the first major cryptocurrency to activate Segregated Witness (SegWit) in May 2017, which paved the way for Bitcoin's own SegWit activation later that year and unlocked the Lightning Network. In May 2022, Litecoin activated the MimbleWimble Extension Block (MWEB), giving users the option to conduct confidential transactions where amounts and addresses are hidden from casual chain observers — the first major payments coin to add opt-in privacy through a soft fork.

Litecoin is deliberately conservative in its roadmap. There is no active push for smart contracts, DeFi, or a rich token ecosystem on the chain. The project's focus is transactional throughput, predictability, and a long unbroken uptime record. This makes it a favourite of payment processors and exchanges as a routing rail — its low fees, fast confirmations, and deep liquidity on almost every exchange globally make it a practical tool for moving value between venues without the fee volatility of Bitcoin or the smart-contract risk of Ethereum.