Litecoin (LTC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open source software project released under the MIT/X11 license.Inspired by and technically nearly identical to bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin creation and transfer is based on an open source protocol and is not managed by any central authority.
Litecoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub on October 7, 2011 by Charles Lee, a former Google employee.It was a fork of the Bitcoin-Qt client, differing primarily by having a decreased block generation time, increased maximum number of coins, different hashing algorithm (scrypt, instead of SHA-256),and a slightly modified GUI.
During the month of November 2013, the aggregate value of Litecoin experienced massive growth which included a 100% leap within 24 hours.
Litecoin reached a $1 billion marketcap in November 2013, As of February 2016, its market capitalization is US$136,512,971 with the price at $3 levels.
Litecoin uses scrypt in its proof-of-work algorithm, a sequential memory-hard function requiring asymptotically more memory than an algorithm which is not memory-hard.
The Litecoin Network will produce 84 million Litecoins, or four times as many currency units as will be issued by the Bitcoin Network.
The most common Wallet available today is "Litecoin Core" for Linux, Windows and Mac OS. Litecoin Core is an offline wallet based on the Bitcoin Core wallet.
On January 19, 2014, the Litecoin Android wallet was released. This new release replaces the old Android client which contained major security issues.
A new Litecoin Electrum client a lightweight wallet for Litecoin was released for beta testing on April 10, 2014. As with other Litecoin Dev projects, the client is based on the bitcoin source and the Litecoin developers fix issues upstream in order to make it easier to keep the Litecoin version updated. As with the Litecoin Android wallet, this new version of Electrum for Litecoin replaces the old and unsupported version created in the first year of Litecoin's release. More info: www.litecoin.org
