Litecoin’s price: make decisions based on real-time information!

Litecoin is a decentralised cryptocurrency that was created by Charlie Lee on 13 October 2011. Called the silver to Bitcoin’s gold, Litecoin is highly popular among crypto-asset enthusiasts. Find out what Litecoin is and how its price has performed.

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Understanding the Litecoin price

What is Litecoin?

Litecoin is similar to Bitcoin in a large number of functionalities but also presents some fundamental differences. For example:

  • Its proof-of-work consensus mechanism uses the scrypt hash function rather than SHA-256
  • Blocks are generated four times quicker with an average interval of two and half minutes against Bitcoin’s ten minutes
  • While Bitcoin will only ever have 21 million coins in circulation, Litecoin’s limit is 84 million
  • Mining difficulty changes every two and half days in comparison to two weeks with Bitcoin

Charlie Lee also found another benefit from the similarities between Bitcoin and Litecoin, especially through the interoperability of the two blockchains. He tweeted an example of using Litecoin as an intermediary network for joining Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.

Litecoin is a popular cryptocurrency that has, for some time, had one of the largest market caps at several billion euro. Unless a major issue arises, Litecoin will certainly continue to be one of the market’s largest cryptocurrencies, and the price of Litecoin should move favourably.

 

Price history of Litecoin (LTC)

How has Litecoin’s price performed since its creation?
Litecoin (LTC) was created in 2011 by Charles Lee and was one of the first altcoins. It quickly found listings on various exchanges and its price reached 30 cents. Between 2011 and 2013, its price varied from a few dozen cents to €3.

But starting in November 2013, Litecoin’s price went on its first exuberant bull run over a matter of days. The price multiplied by more than a factor of ten to reach about €50.

With the 2014 bear market and the scandal that engulfed the Mt. Gox exchange, Litecoin’s price collapsed to around €1 in January 2015.

After a slight lift in spring 2015, Litecoin consolidated for the next two years with its price holding around €3.

But in late March 2017, Litecoin began its second climb. It went from €3 at the end of March to €50 by July 2017 and reached €80 in September of that year.

In the final two months of 2017, Litecoin was part of the cryptocurrency bubble and its price sky-rocketed. It hit its all-time high of around €371 on 19 December 2017, a 500% increase in two months.

In 2018, Litecoin, along with the rest of the cryptoverse, crashed and its price fell to €25 on 15 December.

The next year, Litecoin restarted its upward swing and its price climbed to €145 in June 2019, before falling back to €50 in the second half of 2019. Since summer 2020, it has partaken in the new bull market and passed €200 in April 2021.

 

How will the price of Litecoin (LTC) perform in the future?

Litecoin is highly correlated to Bitcoin. It is not surprising then that it follows Bitcoin’s cycles. The chances remain high that the price of Litecoin will continue to move up over the years, until maybe reaching new all-time highs.

But beware, the crypto market is extremely volatile. The result is that it is impossible to make accurate long-term predictions for Litecoin. This is one reason why it is highly important to keep a constant watch on Litecoin’s price.

We only need to look at how Litecoin’s price has fared in the recent past. In the early months of 2020, Litecoin’s price consolidated around €50. When Bitcoin’s mining rewards halved in May 2020 and the bull market gripped the cryptosphere, Litecoin started moving up and went above €200 in 2021. More precisely, it climbed to €259 in April and then €317 on 9 May.

But this proved temporary as Litecoin’s value then fell hard below €200 by the end of the month (€155 on 19 May) before moving upwards again in late 2021 (€242 in November). These extreme fluctuations are not uncommon in the cryptocurrency market on the whole, and Bitcoin in particular.
In 2022, Litecoin’s price again fell below €100. Since then, its price has moved between €90 and €120.

Is it plausible to imagine a significant upturn in Litecoin’s price? As mentioned above, it is impossible to make any accurate predictions for Litecoin. So, we must remain cautious. That said, a rise in price could be expected in 2022 but considering the changes in the LTC price since 2020, any such increase would be very gradual and it would, at best, be years before the symbolic €500 mark is reached again. For this, Litecoin has to prove its robustness and, especially, how it is of use in an already highly competitive ecosystem.

On the flip side, there is always a risk that some bad news hits Litecoin which would have a deleterious effect on its price. An overly long time under the €100 bar would be a bad signal for investors: evidence of LTC’s inability to reach its historic heady heights.

 

A history of Litecoin (LTC)

Litecoin’s price is intimately tied to its history. What is that history?
Charlie Lee created Litecoin in October 2011. Since that date, the asset has always appeared among the largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Litecoin was one of the first altcoins on the market. While many of the altcoins that appeared during the 2011-2013 period have now vanished, Litecoin has stayed on the market thanks to some minor differences to Bitcoin but which proved useful and well thought-out.

Bitcoin is often considered to be digital gold and Litecoin, as a baby brother to Bitcoin, has become digital silver.

Litecoin’s creator, Charlie Lee, wanted to develop a faster, cheaper version of Bitcoin.

Thanks to a recognisable creator and some savvy marketing, Litecoin has kept an active community since 2013 and is popular on the crypto market.

In July 2013, Coinbase hired Charlie for some time, which obviously had a good effect on Litecoin’s reputation. Litecoin’s price shot up in late 2013.

Some years later, in May 2017, when Litecoin was listed on Coinbase, its price started to soar to high levels.

Since that period, Litecoin has often been used as a testnet because of its similarities with Bitcoin. Some developers who wanted to implement new functionalities on Bitcoin test those functionalities first on Litecoin. A practice that persists to today.

Elsewhere, the Litecoin Foundation has taken some interesting decisions: it took 9.9% stake in WEB Bank AG through TokenPay, a platform that offers simplified “crypto-to-fiat” transfers.

Even today, Litecoin continues to provide a testbed for new projects, such as: SegWit, the Lightning Network and Atomic Swaps which were all implemented on Litecoin before being applied to Bitcoin. Litecoin remains a symbolic cryptocurrency.

Litecoin’s value

Like all other cryptocurrencies, the price of Litecoin changes over time according to supply and demand. To know Litecoin’s value at any given time, it is necessary to monitor its price and determine its value against a traditional currency, for example looking at the Litecoin/euro exchange rate.

 

How much is one Litecoin worth?

To know how much one Litecoin is worth, you have to check the change in Litecoin’s price against a traditional currency, such as the euro. At the start of April 2022, the Litecoin/euro exchange rate was 1 Litecoin for €105. You had to pay €105 to buy one LTC coin at that particular time.
Just as you would with any other currency or financial asset, you have to use a traditional currency to buy Litecoin. However, if you already have other cryptocurrencies, you can then swap those for litecoins. For example, you can use bitcoins or ether to buy litecoins at the given LTC exchange rate.

Of course, the value of Litecoin is constantly changing, whether up or down. You also have bear in mind that while there may be an official Litecoin price, each trading platform applies different fees and commissions which can add a difference of a few euros (if we are using the Litecoin/euro exchange rate).

 

What is Litecoin’s real-time price?

To find out how much Litecoin is worth in real time, you can check out the LTC price on a trading platform. On this page, you can find it at the top in a separate chart. Here is how to read this chart:

  • The amount in euros shows how much you need to pay to buy 1 litecoin at a given moment. It moves up and down. Green means it is rising, red means it is dropping.
  • To the right is the percentage change over the given time period, with its corresponding change in euros.
  • The chart is just the changes in Litecoin’s price during the period shown.
  • Lastly, you can find the day’s lows and highs at the bottom of the chart.

Do you already hold a wallet of crypto-assets? Consider keeping an eye on Litecoin’s price and make your decisions in real time!

 

How is Litecoin’s price determined?

The exchange rate of traditional currencies depends on banking institutions and can change according to the decisions made by central banks. But this is not the case with cryptocurrencies, especially those based on decentralised finance (aka DeFi), like Litecoin. Essentially, countries and banking institutions do not directly influence the price of Litecoin.

So, what determines its price? Quite simply, the market does! The LTC price varies according to supply and demand: when demand is strong, the price rises but it drops when demand is weak. This is the natural attraction for Litecoin. Its value depends on the number of units bought and sold. Litecoin was designed with a limited supply of coins that could be brought into circulation: 84 million (four times the number of bitcoins).

Each time you buy or sell litecoins, you are participating (albeit on a very small scale) in changes on its price.

 

What factors influence the market and by extension the value of Litecoin?

The market itself is subject to fluctuations that emanate from a number of factors. These factors influence investors one way or another – they push investors to buy or sell. What are these factors that indirectly influence the price of Litecoin?

  • The country’s legal and tax regulations (which regularly change but not always predictably).
  • The reputation of the cryptocurrency, which depends on how it is portrayed by the media and how the public sees it.
  • The innovations introduced, which play a significant role in reputation (for example, the fact that Litecoin is linked to DeFi is an advantage).
  • Market supply (the number of new coins mined).
  • Bitcoin’s price.
  • The real-world applications of Litecoin (what can be bought with it).

These are some factors to be considered when trying to understand the changes in Litecoin’s price… and make predictions on it!