#16 / Monetary assetslitecoinPartially verified
Litecoin
One of the oldest Bitcoin forks, positioned as faster settlement money.
Token
LTC
Sector
Payments-focused money
Category
Monetary assets
Organizations
0
Coverage
9/11
Live market data
LTC market
CoinGecko data; may be delayed.
Tokenomics
Circulating vs diluted1.08x
- Circulating supply
- 77.76M
- Total supply
- 77.76M
- Max supply
- 84.00M
92.6% of the achievable supply is already circulating.
All-time high (ATH)
$410.26 -86.30% · May 9, 2021
Source: CoinGecko, snapshot of Oct 27, 2026. Figures may be delayed.
On-chain fundamentals
This asset is not mapped to a DefiLlama-tracked protocol or chain, or the provider reports no data for it. When a verified mapping exists, the table appears here.
Why it matters
Litecoin launched in 2011 as an early Bitcoin fork with faster block times and a different hashing algorithm, aiming to be the lighter payments counterpart to Bitcoin's store-of-value role. It has one of the longest uninterrupted operating histories in crypto and is widely supported by payment processors and exchanges, though it has largely ceded narrative ground to newer payment rails and stablecoins.
General research guidance, not analysis specific to this asset. Detail is pending.
Track the real organization or foundation behind the token, not just the ticker.
Separate token utility from price action before building a position.
Compare network usage, liquidity, incentives, and governance quality against nearby competitors.
How it works
Litecoin forked Bitcoin in October 2011 with faster parameters: two-and-a-half-minute blocks, Scrypt mining (ASIC-dominated today), and an 84-million cap — four times Bitcoin's, on the same halving schedule. Its distinguishing feature is MWEB, a 2022 extension block where amounts are hidden and balances aggregated, giving opt-in cash-like privacy that Bitcoin has no equivalent for. It is merge-mined with Dogecoin, so both chains share hashrate economics, and its site reports more than 400 million transactions processed without network downtime in fourteen years.
Token utility
Fast, low-cost peer-to-peer settlement
Widely integrated payment rail
Liquid trading pair with a long history
Value capture
LTC's case is payments money with the longest track record in the category: sub-cent fees, settlement in minutes, and merchant integration accumulated over a decade. It makes no productivity claim — value is monetary premium second to Bitcoin's, now contested by stablecoins on the payments use case itself. MWEB's opt-in privacy is the remaining differentiator, aimed at users who want cash properties without a dedicated privacy coin's regulatory profile.
Supply and issuance
84 million coins hard cap, halvings roughly every four years matching Bitcoin's cadence, and over ninety percent already mined. There is no protocol treasury and no emission beyond mining: development is funded by the Litecoin Foundation, a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit operating on donations — a deliberately lean model whose constraint is that security and development both ride on market demand for LTC itself.
Governance
No on-chain governance: the Litecoin Foundation and open-source contributors steward development, with changes following the same rough-consensus and soft-fork discipline as Bitcoin. MWEB was the biggest protocol change in years and activated as an opt-in soft fork in 2022 — the conservative pace is intentional, in line with treating the asset as money rather than an application platform.
Key risks
Stablecoins have absorbed much of the practical payments demand
Limited developer ecosystem versus smart contract chains
Security budget depends on continued mining interest
Frequently asked questions
Does Litecoin still matter with stablecoins around?
For dollar-denominated payments, stablecoins genuinely took much of the demand — that is the honest competitive picture. What remains LTC's lane is neutral money: no issuer, no freeze, merchant settlement without counterparty risk, plus MWEB for optional privacy. It competes more with Bitcoin-as-cash than with USDT.
What is MWEB and why is it optional?
MimbleWimble Extension is a parallel extension block where transaction amounts are confidential and the UTXO set is compacted. It is opt-in because privacy features create compliance friction: some exchanges restrict MWEB-touched deposits under their own policies. Making it voluntary lets Litecoin offer cash-like privacy without forcing the whole network's transactions into that treatment.
References
Last verified:
- Litecoin - Buy, Hold, Pay & Learn LTC
Litecoin · litecoin.org · primary source
The project's official site, retrieved on the date shown, supporting how it describes itself. It does not establish supply, governance or issuance mechanics.
Accessed
Linked organizations
MapPending linkage to a concrete organization on the map.
Relationships
Competes with
Bitcoin
Serves a comparable role, so the two are worth reading side by side.
Directory suggestion, pending verification.
Related to
Dogecoin
Adjacent asset in the same research context.
Directory suggestion, pending verification.
Competes with
Kaspa
Serves a comparable role, so the two are worth reading side by side.
Directory suggestion, pending verification.
Competes with
Zcash
Serves a comparable role, so the two are worth reading side by side.
Directory suggestion, pending verification.
Competes with
Monero
Serves a comparable role, so the two are worth reading side by side.
Directory suggestion, pending verification.
Competes with
Bitcoin Cash
Serves a comparable role, so the two are worth reading side by side.
Directory suggestion, pending verification.
Competes with
Dash
Serves a comparable role, so the two are worth reading side by side.
Directory suggestion, pending verification.
