Litecoin (LTC) is an early fork of Bitcoin and one of the first altcoins, launched in 2011 by Charlie Lee, an early adopter of Bitcoin and a Google employee. Litecoin was conceived as a “lighter” version of bitcoin and is otherwise very similar to the pioneer cryptocurrency.
Litecoin is primarily used as a currency, specifically as a payment method, as it predates smart contracts and more complex use cases. This is a coin that uses the Proof-of-Work consensus protocol to issue a proposal into circulation. The most convenient way to describe Litecoin is to compare and contrast it with Bitcoin.
Litecoin has a hard limit of 84 million coins, while bitcoin is smaller – only 21 million of them will ever exist.
Litecoin’s block confirmation time is much shorter at 2.5 minutes compared to BTC’s 10 minutes, making it easier to use in everyday transactions.
Litecoin uses the Scrypt cryptographic algorithm in its proof-of-work protocol instead of SHA-256 which is used by Bitcoin. Scrypt is less suitable for mining with specialized hardware such as ASICs, which, in theory, makes it more accessible to the “regular” miner.
These features make Litecoin faster than bitcoin while maintaining almost the same level of security and decentralization; note that the rest of the code is mostly unchanged from the original. Overall, Litecoin is one of the most trusted and commonly used cryptocurrencies on the market, ranking in the top 20 by market cap.Litecoin joined the crypto bull market that lasted from late 2020 to mid-2021. During this time, the price of LTC rose from less than $50 to $412.96, an all-time high that Litecoin reached on May 10, 2021. After this peak, the price dropped quite sharply, reaching $104 by mid-July. However, since then, the market has shown clear signs of recovery, including Litecoin.
The price of LTC was slowly rising in the second half of the summer of 2021. However, this growth slowed down at the end of August as LTC failed to break out of the $190 resistance zone. This is a major milestone for Litecoin, so this resistance will no doubt be tested soon. The result of this is likely to be an important factor in future Bitcoin price predictions.
From late July to mid-August 2021, Litecoin was trading inside an ascending channel, indicating pressure from both bulls and bears. There was a slight correction in August when the price of LTC rose from $185 to $165.
From a technical analysis standpoint, this drop could be the first part of a double bottom pattern. This is possible because after that, the price of Litecoin rose to test the resistance line and failed. As of the end of August 2021, the price of LTC is declining again. If the trend line reverses after touching the same $165 level, this double bottom could mean a significant rise in the price of Litecoin in the future.
