What is Litecoin (LTC)? How it differs from Bitcoin, MWEB and how to get it

What is Litecoin?

Litecoin is a decentralized, open-source cryptocurrency and the network that runs it. Its coin, LTC, can be sent from one person to another without a bank or payment company in the middle, and every payment is recorded on a public blockchain kept by miners and full nodes running Litecoin Core software. Litecoin started as a fork of the Bitcoin codebase, so it shares Bitcoin’s basic design: proof-of-work mining, the UTXO model for tracking coins, a fixed supply and similar addresses. It changes a few parameters, and since 2022 it adds an optional privacy layer, MWEB, that Bitcoin does not have.

• Ticker: LTC. Smallest unit: the litoshi, 0.00000001 LTC.
• Consensus: proof of work with the Scrypt algorithm.
• Maximum supply: 84 million LTC.
• Block target: about 2.5 minutes.

Who created Litecoin, and when

Litecoin was created by Charlie Lee, then an engineer at Google, who announced it on the BitcoinTalk forum in October 2011 as a “lite” version of Bitcoin. According to the Litecoin Foundation, the source code and binaries were published four days before launch so that anyone could prepare to mine, and the network went live on 13 October 2011 at a time chosen by a community vote. Like Satoshi Nakamoto, Lee put a newspaper headline into the genesis block, in his case about the death of Steve Jobs, to show there had been no mining before the public start. Lee later joined Coinbase as one of its early employees. Today the Litecoin Foundation, incorporated in Singapore in 2017 and a US 501(c)(3) non-profit since mid-2022, supports development, while the code is maintained in the Litecoin Core project on GitHub.

How Litecoin works: Scrypt mining and merged mining

Miners compete to find a valid block, and the winner receives the block reward plus the transaction fees. Litecoin’s choice of Scrypt instead of Bitcoin’s SHA-256 was meant to make mining more memory-intensive, so in the early years people could mine LTC on ordinary CPUs and graphics cards. Specialized Scrypt ASIC machines appeared later, and today Litecoin mining is dominated by them, much as Bitcoin mining is. Since 2014 Litecoin has been merge-mined with Dogecoin, which also uses Scrypt: the same work can produce a valid block on both chains, so miners earn on both and each network benefits from the combined hashrate.

Supply, block reward and halvings

Litecoin’s supply is capped at 84 million LTC, four times Bitcoin’s 21 million. New coins enter circulation only through block rewards. The reward started at 50 LTC per block and halves every 840,000 blocks, which at 2.5 minutes per block works out to about every four years. There have been three halvings so far; the most recent, on 2 August 2023, cut the reward from 12.5 to 6.25 LTC. The Litecoin Foundation expects the next one in late July 2027, taking the reward to 3.125 LTC, and the last new coins to be issued around 2142.

Block time, confirmations and fees

Litecoin aims for one block every 2.5 minutes and adjusts the mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, about 3.5 days, to keep that pace as miners join or leave. A transaction is confirmed when it is included in a block, and each later block adds another confirmation. With four blocks in the time Bitcoin produces one, a Litecoin payment gathers confirmations faster in clock time, although how many confirmations a wallet, exchange or merchant waits for is up to them.

• Fees are not a percentage of the amount: a wallet multiplies a fee rate by the transaction’s size in virtual bytes.
• Litecoin Core’s default minimum wallet fee rate is 10,000 litoshis per 1,000 virtual bytes, or 10 litoshis per vbyte.
• At that rate a 200-vbyte transaction pays 2,000 litoshis, which is 0.00002 LTC.
• MWEB peg-outs follow an extra network rule: their outputs cannot be spent for 6 blocks, about 15 minutes.

Litecoin vs Bitcoin: the main differences

Litecoin is closer to Bitcoin than most other coins: it started from Bitcoin’s code and has often adopted the same upgrades. It activated Segregated Witness (SegWit) on 10 May 2017, before Bitcoin did. The differences that matter day to day are the numbers below and MWEB.

• Mining algorithm: Scrypt on Litecoin, SHA-256 on Bitcoin.
• Block target: 2.5 minutes vs 10 minutes.
• Supply cap: 84 million LTC vs 21 million BTC.
• Halving interval: every 840,000 blocks vs every 210,000 blocks; both come out at roughly four years.
• Privacy layer: Litecoin has optional MWEB; Bitcoin has no built-in equivalent today.
• Addresses: Litecoin uses L, M, 3, ltc1 and ltcmweb1; Bitcoin uses 1, 3 and bc1.

Litecoin addresses at a glance

On the main chain a Litecoin address starts with L (the original format), M or 3 (script addresses) or ltc1 (native SegWit). An MWEB address starts with ltcmweb1. A Litecoin 3 address uses the same version byte as a Bitcoin P2SH address, so the two can look identical: always copy it from the Litecoin account in your wallet. Sending LTC to an address on a different network, or sending another chain’s token called LTC to a Litecoin address, does not work the way people expect. Our Litecoin wallet guide covers address types and wallets in detail.

What is Litecoin MWEB?

MWEB stands for MimbleWimble Extension Blocks. It was proposed as Litecoin Improvement Proposals in 2019, led by developer David Burkett, and activated as a soft fork in May 2022, so older software kept working. Each normal Litecoin block now commits to an extension block that runs alongside it at the same 2.5-minute pace. Inside the extension block, transactions use the MimbleWimble protocol, which hides amounts with cryptographic commitments while still letting every node check that no coins were created out of thin air. Burkett also added stealth addresses and one-sided transactions, so you can receive to an ltcmweb1 address without being online, the way you would on the main chain. You move coins into MWEB by pegging in and back out by pegging out; outputs created by a peg-out cannot be spent for 6 blocks.

What MWEB hides, and what it doesn’t

MWEB is opt-in, which means its privacy depends on how you use it. The Litecoin Foundation describes it as making the amount sent known only to the sender and receiver and keeping address balances private, but it also says plainly that MWEB does not provide 100% privacy and is not as strong as Monero, where everything is hidden by default.

• Hidden: amounts of payments inside MWEB, and the balances of MWEB addresses.
• Hidden from the receiver: how much else the sender holds, because MWEB payments do not expose the sender’s change.
• Visible: every peg-in and peg-out amount, since those cross the public main chain, and the total amount held in MWEB.
• Linkable: pegging in an amount and pegging out nearly the same amount soon after suggests the same owner.
• Not covered: your IP address, which needs Tor or a VPN; Nexus Wallet, for example, includes Tor.

What Litecoin is used for

The Litecoin Foundation positions LTC as a currency for everyday payments, transfers between people and payments across borders, helped by short block times and low fees. The Foundation’s Nexus Wallet includes Flexa checkout for paying at merchants, and people also use LTC to move value between exchanges and wallets. Developers have also used Litecoin to run upgrades before Bitcoin, SegWit being the best-known case. In swaps, LTC is often the coin people hold on one side: they send LTC and receive Bitcoin, Monero or a stablecoin, or the other way round.

How to get LTC by swapping

If you already hold another coin, you can swap it for LTC without opening an account. On VeriSwap, choose the coin you send and LTC as the coin you receive, enter the amount and paste a Litecoin address from your own wallet. The quote shows one receive amount with the 0.5% service fee included, stays valid for 15 minutes, and the minimum order is 50 USD in value. We accept L, M, 3 and ltc1 payout addresses, not MWEB ltcmweb1 addresses; if you want the coins in MWEB, receive them at an ltc1 address and peg them in afterwards. Your wallet pays the fee for sending the deposit, VeriSwap pays the Litecoin network fee for the payout, and there is no KYC required by us.

• BTC → LTC: send Bitcoin, receive Litecoin at your own address.
• XMR → LTC: send Monero, receive Litecoin.
• USDT → LTC: send Tether on Ethereum, TRON or Solana, receive Litecoin.
• Save the order reference; the private order page logs every step.

Where to keep your LTC

Keep LTC in a wallet where you hold the recovery phrase. Litecoin Core is the full-node desktop wallet; Nexus Wallet, the Litecoin Foundation’s mobile app, and Cake Wallet support MWEB on iOS and Android; Electrum-LTC is a light desktop wallet; and Ledger and Trezor keep the keys on a hardware device, with Trezor giving only limited MWEB support. Our Litecoin wallet guide explains the address types, MWEB pegging, fees and how to look up an address in an explorer. Whatever you choose, never type your recovery phrase anywhere except the wallet itself.