Litecoin is a peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world. Litecoin is an open source, global payment network that is fully decentralized without any central authorities. Mathematics secures the network and empowers individuals to control their own finances. Litecoin features faster transaction confirmation times and improved storage efficiency than the leading math-based currency. With substantial industry support, trade volume and liquidity, Litecoin is a proven medium of commerce complementary to Bitcoin.

Litecoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub on October 7, 2011 by Charlie Lee, a Google employee and former Engineering Director at Coinbase. The Litecoin network went live on October 13, 2011. It was a fork of the Bitcoin Core client, differing primarily by having a decreased block generation time, increased maximum number of coins, different hashing algorithm and a slightly modified interface. So Litecoin celebrated its 8th birthday last sunday. Congratulations!

Happy 8th birthday to Litecoin! 🎉 Litecoin network has been up and running continuously for the past 8 years with zero downtime. And in that span of time, over $500,000,000,000 worth of LTC have been transacted. 😮 Looking forward to the next 8 years and more! 🚀 pic.twitter.com/ItcDWrdCf1 — Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite) October 13, 2019

Funny fact is that Litecoin is one of the few projects that did not write a whitepaper for its cryptocurrency. One of the first public appearances of Litecoin’s CEO Charlie Lee gives us a great insight on the beginning of Litecoin: