Litecoin: Lite On Love

LTC is the cryptocurrency world’s ultimate wallflower. Litecoin never seems to get any love. Nonetheless, it is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies as It continues to exist and perform actual duties. It is one of the most well-known and trusted cryptos out there. That may mean it's boring I guess.

GrayScale even has a trust for this cryptocurrency. Boring. Institutional money is investing in LTC in record numbers. Boring. LTC is one of Grayscale’s largest investments. Boring. They plan on increasing this investment. SOOOO boring.

Litecoin is a robust cryptocurrency. It is fully decentralized and boasts a healthy miner ecosystem. It has been consistent in the market cap's top 10 since its inception in 2011. It is widely used globally. Yes, people really use Litecoin. Yet, Litecoin gets very little press.

Litecoin has a real-world use case in the payment domain already extant. With Litecard, payments are even easier. Litecoin has over 50,000 transactions on the network per day. Litecoin is one of the most liquid and stable cryptocurrencies without actually being a stable coin. Litecoin is on just about every exchange.

The Litecoin network has zero downtime and 100% uptime. It is a true proof of work currency. On any given day, it is transacting over a billion dollars. Despite the usage, it is still fast to transfer money and extremely cheap compared to other financial protocols. Not only that it has the second-highest number of ATMs globally behind only Bitcoin, which adds to its liquidity.

Litecoin’s inventor, Charlie Lee, wanted to create digital silver to supplement the digital gold which Bitcoin represents. Like Bitcoin, Litecoin also has a supply limit. Litecoin has four times the supply of Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s supply is capped at 21 million, which means that Litecoin has a supply limit of 84 million coins.

Charlie Lee created Litecoin in 2011 by tweaking Bitcoin’s code while working at Google.

He then served as director of engineering at the crypto exchange Coinbase Inc. Coinbase listed Litecoin while Lee was still on the payroll, which would seem to violate some rule somewhere, but it is the Wild West people! in any case, Lee left soon after the listing to focus on Litecoin.

Why is Litecoin everywhere but seemingly nowhere?

It could be the fact the inventor bailed out. Lee announced his decision on Dec. 20, 2017, when he sold almost all of his coins into the market. Since that time, Litecoin has lost favor though not utility. It is hard to blame Lee. In the crypto world, money can be lost in large volumes. Losers of enormous amounts of money often look for someone to blame.

Lee avoids being a lightning rod for this with his divestment. I guess one should note though most of his peers have had a financial stake in their coins. Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum, eventually disclosed his holdings and some trades. Chief executives at public companies are traditionally awarded stock and options in order to have some skin in the game.

Lee’s explanation seems pretty straightforward though. “It definitely had some effect on people’s confidence in Litecoin, because people are used to traditional public companies, " Lee said. “Unlike CEOs of public companies I am not paid to increase the shares of the companies."

The fact Litecoin survived the inventor's cash-out is a great sign of longer term durability for Litecoin. Consistent ongoing development of the project with Mimblewimble being released also is encouraging. Adding this protocol enhancement to Litecoin makes transactions there essentially private. Unlike the ability to track Bitcoin transactions to wallets, Mimblewimble creates an extra layer of privacy to Litecoin. Litecoin IS pretty boring, I guess.

Disclaimer: The opinions in this article belong to the author alone. Nothing in this article constitutes investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before making any investment decisions.