Litecoin (LTC) is celebrating its 8th anniversary.

Eight years ago, the Litecoin Network was launched the day in which Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder, died at 56. The firs Litecoin block was mined containing the following message:

“@NY Times 05/Oct/2011 Steve Jobs, Apple’s Visionary, Dies at 56″

According to the Litecoin Foundation, two further blocks were mined confirming the genesis was valid.

At the same time, it was necessary to release the genesis hash. The previous days to October 13, 39 people voted for the project to be released on October 13 at 03:00 GMT.

Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin, released the genesis hash to the Bitcoin Talk forums, allowing one of the leading cryptocurrencies to start operating.

https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/1183434480876261376?s=20

A large number of users started mining the cryptocurrency. As the Litecoin Foundation explains, blocks were mined every 10 to 20 seconds when the network was created with a 2.5 block time.

At the moment, Litecoin is the 6th largest cryptocurrency in the market with a valuation of over $3.65 billion. At the same time, each LTC can be purchased for $57.5.

Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP, Tether (USDT) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) are the only cryptocurrencies larger than LTC at the time of writing.

Nonetheless, Litecoin was also the second-largest crypto for a long period. Moreover, this is the only cryptocurrency with the exception of Bitcoin not to fall below the top 10.

Back in December 2017, when the whole cryptocurrency market was expanding, Litecoin reached a price of over $360.

In addition to it, Litecoin is one of the third most traded cryptocurrency after Bitcoin and Ethereum with a volume in the last 24 hours of $2.18 billion.

Now, Litecoin developers are working in order to make the cryptocurrency more private by adding confidential transactions.

Happy Birthday, Litecoin!