Litecoin is a digital coin that appeared in 2011. It is essentially the first fork of Bitcoin. This project has managed to pass difficult time tests. At the same time, he did not easily survive but also increased the user base. There were periods when Litecoin quotes dropped to the level of the start of trading. But even such situations could not destroy the coin, which survived several crisis moments, the LTC cryptocurrency only became stronger. In this article, we will consider what Litecoin is, and its prospects and find out whether it is profitable to trade Litecoin.
History of project development
In October 2011, Litecoin was launched as an open-source custom client. At that time, the site operated based on the Internet hosting GitHub. The digital coin operates under the MIT / X11 license. Thus, each user was able to execute, make changes, copy the program code of the site and distribute copies with the changes made.
Litecoin quotes began to grow sharply in the fall of 2013. In the wake of this meteoric rise, the capitalization of the crypto coin exceeded the psychological mark of 1 billion US dollars.
At the beginning of 2017, 1 LTC rose in price by 2,000 percent, which allowed it to reach its peak value of $ 92.07.
But after it became known that the use of cryptocurrencies was banned at the state level in China, the LTC rate doubled to $ 52.47.
Nevertheless, the coin managed to overcome the crisis, and by the beginning of 2021, its value was more than $ 100. Thus, this coin managed to gain a foothold in the 6th position among all cryptocurrencies, reaching a capitalization volume of $ 16.5 billion. The Litecoin cryptocurrency may be able to continue its progressive growth, which will allow it to enter the top five most popular and expensive cryptocurrencies.
Litecoin characteristics and features
Litecoin is a standalone cryptocurrency project. LTC coins have several significant differences from bitcoin, which makes this project stand out against the background of bitcoin clones. To begin with, it is worth highlighting that this coin uses a different software working algorithm when interacting with users. If Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 working principle, then Litecoin is Scrypt. This software algorithm is closely related to memory. Thus, the process of crypto mining is simplified, which leads to an increase in the profitability of mining. All this contributed to the fact that the Litecoin rate against the dollar has recently begun to grow.
Litecoin mining has overcome all evolutionary stages, from mining using CPU power, to video cards and special ASIC systems. Approximately every three days there is a change in the difficulty level of mining coins. It makes it possible to speed up the calculation of blocks and the execution of transactions. LTC cryptocurrency is characterized by fast confirmation of exchange transactions, which takes no more than two minutes. At the same time, such a transaction in Bitcoin will last from 10 minutes.
The cryptographic coin Litecoin also has a limited supply of four times the supply of Bitcoin. In total, up to 84 million LTC can be issued. The creators of the project expect that by 2022 they will be able to issue no more than 63 million coins. All of them will be paid to users as a reward to users or miners.
Is it profitable to invest in Litecoin?
Those who chose Litecoin as their investment in 2019 were delighted. The first quarter was one of the best in LTC history, doubling in price from $ 30 to over $ 60.
Then it was time for new peaks, and in June 2019, LTC reached an all-time high at $ 146.43. In six and a half months of galloping growth, it was possible to earn up to 388%, that is, to quadruple the initial investment amount.
During the specified period, investments in Litecoin brought income higher than bitcoin investments, which added 263% over the same time. Litecoin halving was carried out in August, while the reward to the miner for one block was halved, but this did not have much effect on the quotes.
However, Litecoin did not show such high growth for a long time, and after reaching impressive tops, it went into a correction. Even so, at the end of the year, the coin showed an increase of 40%. Therefore, if some investors did not manage to get out of their investment in Litecoin in time, they are most likely satisfied anyway.
Starting at $ 41 in 2020, Litecoin’s price skyrocketed to $ 81.69, echoing the scenario of 2019, when the value of the cryptocurrency also doubled. However, the market began to cool in February, and as a result, all altcoins were overtaken by Black Thursday on March 12, when Litecoin plummeted to $ 25.57, which was the absolute minimum in 52 weeks. But at the moment, the cost of Litecoin is already $ 182, which indicates that the coin has successfully emerged from the crisis and continues to grow in price. It is a good argument in favor of the fact that trading Litecoin is profitable.
