Litecoin price (XLCUSD): Live Price Chart

Litecoin is one of the most valuable altcoins in the cryptocurrency space. It was also one of the first altcoins, established in October 2011. The inspiration behind the creation of Litecoin was to develop a “lite version” of Bitcoin, which emerged two years earlier. It was the brainchild of former Google employee, Charlie Lee, who believed Bitcoin’s mining requirements was creating a monopoly for miners that could afford to invest in expensive, high-powered GPUs. In doing so, Bitcoin’s critics feared the cryptocurrency was inching closer to centralisation – the very antithesis of cryptocurrency.

Litecoin is effectively a hard fork of the Bitcoin Core blockchain, with enhanced measures designed to improve the scalability of Litecoin. This includes faster block generation times of two-and-a-half minutes, an increased supply of Litecoin (LTC) and an alternative hashing algorithm that’s not overly reliant on GPUs.

Many in the cryptocurrency community consider Litecoin to be the ‘digital silver’ to Bitcoin’s ‘digital gold’. Today, Litecoin is in the top 20 most valuable cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation.

In terms of Litecoin’s all-time value, it rose some 1,449% in the first 11 years of its existence. Like many cryptocurrencies, the Litecoin price has fluctuated wildly through the years. Its all-time price chart resembles something like a roller-coaster ride.

During the ‘boom’ era for cryptocurrencies in 2017, Litecoin’s value surged to a high of $230.33 per LTC before falling to $19 per LTC by December 2018. The Covid-19 pandemic encouraged further speculation on the price of Litecoin, spiking to all-time highs of $248.82 per LTC in May 2021. Once again, its value fell fast soon after, with Litecoin in a price range of $40-$60 per LTC during H2 2022. Market forces of supply and demand keep LTC much cheaper than Bitcoin, as there is the potential for four times as many LTC to be in circulation than BTC.

Litecoin is an agile cryptocurrency suitable for paying for a host of digital services, but the volatility of Litecoin’s value means that you can never guarantee what your LTC will pay for from month-to-month.

By trading the price of Litecoin, you’re able to profit even if the value of LTC falls. With cryptocurrency CFD, you can take short (sell) positions on crypto assets like Litecoin as well as long (buy) positions. With a short position on Litecoin, you’ll profit so long as the price of LTC moves below your entry position. When you trade volatile crypto assets like Litecoin, it’s possible to use risk management tools to set stop-loss and take-profit orders to limit your losses too.