Litecoin

LTC is a Bitcoin-derived cryptocurrency for payments, with faster block times and optional privacy.

Litecoin is a digital currency and payment network created by Charlie Lee as a lighter version of Bitcoin. It launched on 13 October 2011 with only 150 premined coins, and its software, Litecoin Core, is built on Bitcoin's code. Nobody owns the network: independent computers check every transaction against open-source rules.

Supply is capped at 84 million LTC, four times Bitcoin's. About 77.65 million LTC (about 92%) existed on 27 September 2026. New coins go only to miners, who secure the network with proof-of-work using the Scrypt algorithm; the reward halves every 840,000 blocks, about every four years. It has been 6.25 LTC per block since the August 2023 halving, and the next halving is expected around July 2027. Blocks arrive about every 2.5 minutes, four times faster than Bitcoin.

Since May 2022 Litecoin has had an optional privacy layer, MimbleWimble Extension Blocks (MWEB), which hides transaction amounts for users who choose it. South Korea's major exchanges delisted LTC in June 2022 over this feature, citing anti-money-laundering rules. In March 2026 developers found that a flaw in MWEB had been used to create an invalid 85,034 LTC withdrawal; the coins were recovered minus an 850 LTC bounty, which Charlie Lee covered. In April a second attempt produced a 13-block invalid chain that the network removed by reorganisation, and further fixes followed through September 2026.

In the United States, LTC is named as a digital commodity in the SEC's March 2026 interpretation, and a spot Litecoin ETF (Canary, Nasdaq: LTCC) has traded since October 2025. The non-profit Litecoin Foundation supports development and promotion, and a separate smart-contract layer, LitVM, is running as a testnet.