Introduction
As a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency, Litecoin is one of the earliest versions of Bitcoin or otherwise known as "Altcoins", because it was designed to function as a faster and cheaper variety of Bitcoin. Another improvement from Bitcoin that Litecoin has, is its supply limit of 84 million, which is four times that of Bitcoin's 21 million.
To put it simply, Litecoin is almost similar to Bitcoin technically speaking. Developers of Litecoin likened to it as the “silver” to Bitcoin’s “gold”.
And just like other popular digital coins, Litecoin or LTC is available for trading via the platforms of eToro.
77% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
History of Litecoin
Litecoin was launched by Google employee Charlie Lee on October 7, 2011—two years after Bitcoin—via an open-source client on the GitHub platform as a fork of the Bitcore Core. Lee later became the Engineering Director of Coinbase. LTC is seen by cryptocurrency investors as cut from the same cloth as Bitcoin. Lee even refer to Litecoin as the "little version of Bitcoin".
During the peak of the crypto explosion in 2007, Litecoin experienced a huge jump in its value by increasing more than 8200% in its market value and 36000% in market cap.
Litecoin (LTC) in a Nutshell
- Litecoin can be used as payment by users from all over the world without having to go through intermediary channels to process every transaction.
- Litecoin, as measured by market cap, is the 6th-biggest digital coin in the world today.
- It is set with a hard cap of 84 million Litecoin tokens for circulation
- Litecoin has rolled-out a wider adoption or payment system than most cryptocurrencies, especially in places that are remotely linked by traditional banking infrastructures.
- Litecoin has recently collaborated with two gaming companies (CipSoft and Atari) for the use of Litecoin in its payment transactions.
- Litecoin lessens block approval time from Bitcoin's 10 minutes to 2 and a half minutes.
3 Things That Make Litecoin Attractive
- The Litecoin network process more transactions per second, largely due consuming lesser block generation time. By mimicking Bitcoin's Proof-Of-Work and improving it, it operates a lot quicker than Bitcoin.
- Litecoin charges near-zero fees. In Litecoin, users only have to shoulder 1/1000 LTC in fees for every transaction. Compared to Bitcoin's hefty transaction fees that reaches up to $40 and up, Litecoin's cheap fees greatly appeals to users.
- Litecoin is the biggest blockchain network based on the Scrypt algorithm, making it provide a safer and more private transactions to users. Litecoin keeps a private ledger to provide users a way to make private payments.
Uses of Litecoin
- Litecoin is an ideal crypto for use as investment tool or vehicle. Despite the volatility of the cryptocurrency market, Litecoin has exhibited a strong performance in the market.
- Litecoin is also used a payment for everyday online transactions. Despite the current limitations of web-based merchants accepting Litecoin for payment, analysts believed that more companies and online retailers will soon accept Litecoin as payment.
- Litecoin can be used for cross-border transactions bypassing nation's governing banks, such as country to country money transfer and payment.
- Litecoin can also be used in the trading and finance world. Since the blockchain technology has made it possible to digitize the practice of investment trading, trading on the blockchain universe not only lessen cost and cut ties with central bank regulations, it also provides for a cheaper, more secure and faster transaction.
How Litecoin is Created?
Litecoin is created through the innovative and elaborate procedure called "mining"—similar to Bitcoin. A new 'block' or a ledger entry is generated by the Litecoin network every 2.5 minutes.
Each block is verified by a mining software and seen by every "miner" (Litecoin system participant). When a miner flags a transaction as "verified", it then enters through the blockchain network that keeps a tab on all Litecoin transactions ever accomplished.
Take note: The reward for every miner successfully verifying a transaction is 12.5 Litecoin. These incentives however, will be halved in a cycled interval until it reaches the hard cap of 84,000,000 Litecoin mined.
How to Buy LTC?
The simplest way to buy Litecoin is to sign up for an account with a cryptocurrency or trading broker that supports the direct BUY and SELL of Litecoin. One such cryptocurrency and trading broker is eToro.
The eToro is a great place to start since it offers a straightforward interface that allows for a seamless trading by clicking of a few buttons.
How to Trade LTC on eToro?
- On your eToro dashboard, click “Trade Markets”.
Clicking "Trade Markets" on eToro - Select “Crypto”.
Selecting "Crypto" on eToro's Markets screen - Scroll down to look for “LTC”.
Looking for Litecoin on eToro's list of crypto assets - Click “Buy” and set the amount you want to invest.
 on eToro's platform.webp)
Buying Litecoin (LTC) on eToro's platform - Click “Open Trade”.
Executing LTC buy order on eToro
How to Store LTC
Other than storing your LTC on your eToro portfolio or storing it on an eToro Money Crypto Wallet, you can also save it on a cold storage or hardware wallet. Hardware wallets are referred to as "cold storage", as these are devices not connected to the internet thus making it impossible for hackers to access it. The popular hardware wallets are the Ledger Nano S and the Ledger Nano X which both supports the LTC.
How to Open an LTC Wallet with eToro?
To use store your LTC on the eToro Money Crypto Wallet, you will need to transfer LTC position via the eToro trading platform under your name to the crypto wallet under the same account. The good news is that you won't incur any fees opening a LTC wallet and transferring the LTC crypto to this wallet.
Is Litecoin a Wise Investment?
As we all know that in cryptocurrency market, one must expect the value of cryptos to experience volatility. However, there are cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin that continuously garner confidence with regards to its future value.
Supporters and users of Litecoin are hopeful that a surge in payment adoption and widening of its usage will propel the value of Litecoin even higher in the coming years.
Litecoin's stability and affordability makes it a great candidate to become one of the leading cryptocurrency to be used in the broadening borderless transactions in the world today.
And check out whether there are any other competitors to the business. And if there are any competitors you should be checking about their growth too.
Litecoin (LTC) Price
Litecoin peaked at $412.96 in May 2021 beating its former high of $360.93 in December of 2017.
eToro is a multi-asset platform which offers both investing in stocks and cryptoassets, as well as trading CFDs.
Please note that CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 67% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.
Past performance is not an indication of future results.
Cryptoassets are volatile instruments which can fluctuate widely in a very short timeframe and therefore are not appropriate for all investors. Other than via CFDs, trading cryptoassets is unregulated and therefore is not supervised by any EU regulatory framework.
eToro USA LLC does not offer CFDs and makes no representation and assumes no liability as to the accuracy or completeness of the content of this publication, which has been prepared by our partner utilizing publicly available non-entity specific information about eToro.