What is Litecoin?
Litecoin (LTC) was created in 2011 by Charlie Lee, a former Google engineer, as a fork of Bitcoin. It was designed to be 'the silver to Bitcoin's gold' - a lighter, faster version of Bitcoin for everyday transactions. Litecoin uses the Scrypt hashing algorithm instead of Bitcoin's SHA-256 and targets a 2.5-minute block time, four times faster than Bitcoin.
Litecoin is one of the oldest and most consistently active cryptocurrencies. Despite more than a decade of newer projects, it remains in the top echelon of market cap and is supported by every major exchange, custodian and payment processor.
How does Litecoin work?
Litecoin uses Proof-of-Work with Scrypt, a memory-hard hashing function originally designed to resist specialised mining hardware. Blocks are produced every 2.5 minutes and the total supply is capped at 84 million LTC - exactly four times Bitcoin's 21 million cap.
Litecoin has often served as a testbed for Bitcoin-compatible upgrades: Segregated Witness (SegWit) activated on Litecoin before Bitcoin, and MimbleWimble Extension Blocks (MWEB) - an opt-in privacy feature - launched on Litecoin in 2022. These proven-in-production deployments influenced how similar features were debated on Bitcoin.
What is Litecoin used for?
Litecoin is primarily used as a payments asset. It is accepted by a long list of merchants and payment processors, typically chosen for its faster confirmation time and lower fees than Bitcoin. MimbleWimble Extension Blocks add an optional privacy layer for users who opt into confidential transfers.
LTC is also a commonly used pairing asset on exchanges and has a sizable population of long-term holders. Its quadrennial reward halving closely mirrors Bitcoin's and is often seen as a leading indicator of sentiment in the broader PoW mining economy.
Where can you buy Litecoin?
Litecoin (LTC) is traded on a wide range of centralized and decentralized exchanges. The most liquid markets for LTC sit on tier-1 venues - the sort of exchanges where institutional desks and professional market makers rebalance continuously - which is what keeps the spread tight and the last price tied closely to fair value.
You can open the Markets section above to see the live list of exchanges quoting LTC, sorted by 24-hour volume. Each row links to the venue's trade page so you can go directly from research to execution without copying the ticker around by hand.
What is the daily trading volume of Litecoin (LTC)?
The reported 24-hour trading volume of Litecoin is $17.89M. Volume is a live reading of how much LTC changed hands across all tracked exchanges in the past day and tends to rise during periods of price discovery and fall during consolidation.
For traders, the ratio between volume and market cap is often more informative than either number on its own: a high vol-to-mcap ratio indicates liquid, actively traded supply, while a low ratio suggests that most holders are sitting on the asset.
What is the highest and lowest price for Litecoin (LTC)?
Litecoin reached an all-time high of $410.26 on its all-time high, and an all-time low of $1.15 on its all-time low. It is currently trading - from its peak and - from its bottom.
The distance from ATH is a useful gauge of recovery potential during a bear market and of stretched positioning during a bull market. Combined with the all-time-low figure it provides a quick statistical frame for thinking about where LTC sits in its long-run price range.
What is the market cap of Litecoin (LTC)?
Litecoin's market capitalization is currently $4.36B, and it is ranked #26 by market cap on Cryptopricing. Market cap is calculated as the current price multiplied by the circulating supply (77.14 million LTC are actively circulating today).
Market cap is a common but imperfect measure. It reflects the theoretical value of every circulating token at the current market price, but it doesn't capture how thin the top of the order book might be - an important caveat for tokens with low floats or illiquid cap tables.
What is the fully diluted valuation of Litecoin (LTC)?
The fully diluted valuation (FDV) of Litecoin is $4.36B. FDV is a projection of what the market cap would be if every token that will ever exist - including those that have not yet been unlocked, mined or issued - were in circulation at the current price.
FDV is a useful second reading alongside market cap. A large gap between mcap and FDV signals that future token emissions could dilute current holders, while a small gap indicates that supply is already mostly out.
How does the price performance of Litecoin compare against its peers?
Over the past 24 hours, Litecoin has moved -2.63%. Over the past seven days, the change is +2.22%. Comparing these figures to the global crypto market cap change (shown in the ticker at the top of this page) tells you whether LTC is leading, lagging or tracking the broader market.
For deeper analysis, the categories strip on the home page groups coins by theme - Layer 1, Meme, DePIN, AI, RWA and so on - and lets you compare Litecoin against its closest peers. The category detail pages surface the underlying coins and their seven-day sparklines in a single view.
How to store Litecoin?
Like any crypto asset, the right way to store LTC depends on how often you plan to use it. Long-term holders typically self-custody using a hardware wallet such as Ledger or Trezor, which keeps private keys offline and immune to most remote attacks.
For active traders, a reputable custodial exchange wallet can be appropriate, especially one with clear proof-of-reserves attestations. Whatever approach you choose, the most important rule is to keep your recovery phrase offline, never share it, and never enter it into a web form or attached to a DM - no legitimate support agent will ever ask for it.
