Creator of Litecoin Charlie Lee, aka Stoshilite on Twitter, exalted the crypto’s launch and ongoing development as the ‘digital silver‘ cryptocurrency turns ten.

Lee specified the exact time of the birth of the asset, which ultimately came to be one of the most successful cryptocurrencies to date.

Litecoin was launched at 8 PM PDT on October 12, but we’ve always celebrated Litecoin’s launch on October 13 because it was the 13th using UTC timezone. In 7.5 hours, it will be exactly 10 years since I launched the Litecoin network. The network has never gone down ever since!

The blockchain for all intents and purposes is alive. I cannot shut it down and I know Litecoin will outlive me. These 10 years have been a wild ride. Here’s to 10 more. It’s amazing what Satoshi Nakamoto has created. I am privileged to have played a tiny part in all of this.

The Litecoin Foundation also joined in the celebrations, sharing some data on Litecoin’s “one decade of resilience”.


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Charlie Lee’s idea went live in 2011

According to reports from the Litecoin foundation, the network processed over $100 billion in transactions this year alone, with daily volumes ranging from $150 million to over a billion per day.

The numbers are staggering in light of an industry that has been progressing non-stop at lightning speeds.

Charlie Lee went on to describe Litecoin’s almost flawless history, explaining that the coin was retain most of the features that contributed to Bitcoin’s success, such as proof-of-work PoW mining, a fair launch and distrbituion mechanism (without a pre-mine like that of ETH) and without a central authority or institution controlling a large percentage of the currency.

Litecoin’s properties remained mostly the same as Bitcoin’s with a few changes: 

Litecoin was to have 4x faster blocks, 4x the amount of coins and utilize its own mining algorithm (Scrypt), giving it the opportunity to remain highly secure by not competing against Bitcoin miners.

Essentially, in Lee’s head, Litecoin was meant as a pressure-release valve for the Bitcoin network. By behaving in this way, once the Bitcoin network became congested, users would have an alternative in Litecoin.

Litecoin today

With a total market capitalisation exceeding $11 billion, LTC sits among the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap, having a market dominance of 0.51% at the time of publishing.

Earlier this year, the coin briefly eclipsed the all time high, reaching $413 at one point. Today, LTC is worth $169 as the volatile crypto market does its thing.

The crypto has been widely integrated into almost every crypto exchanges, achieving high liquidity and also enjoys its rank as the second most integrated crypto in ATMs worldwide.

Per the following data, out of a total of 29,000 cryptocurrency ATMs worldwide, 21,597 ATMs offer LTC, surpassing the 19,202 ATMs that offer Ethereum (ETH).

When it comes to technology, Litecoin is moving at a rapid pace – often regarded as the test-net for bitcoin. In fact, Litecoin developers are moving ahead with the integration of MimbleWimble, among other major developments, which will be completed by the year’s end.

In terms of technology, Litecoin is moving forward with the integration of MimbleWimble, stating that it will be completed by the end of 2021.


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