Litecoin ($LTC), a cryptocurrency that has often been described as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold, has been outperforming the wider cryptocurrency market over the past few weeks, to the point it has recently overtaken Solana ($SOL) in market capitalization.
Litecoin was created back in 2011 as a fork of Bitcoin, and features near-zero cost peer-to-peer transactions. It differs from the flagship cryptocurrency in a number of ways, however, with reduced transaction confirmation times, lower fees, a larger maximum supply of 84 million LTC, and other different technical aspects.
The cryptocurrency was created by former Google engineer Charlie Loo, who referred to it as a “lite version of Bitcoin” at one point. It has been outperforming the wider cryptocurrency market in the wake of FTX’s collapse, which has seen several platforms including Genesis and BlockFi halt withdrawals.
Nov 2 was the CoinDesk story about FTX's balance sheet.
— Jim Bianco biancoresearch.eth (@biancoresearch) November 22, 2022
MAJOR crypto prices (ex stablecoins) since Nov 2 below.
The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index is -25.85%.
Best performer is litecoin, by a lot, +1.97% (only gainer).
Worst performer is Solana, by a lot, down -61.91%.
Why? pic.twitter.com/UKE0t7RRQr
Meanwhile, Solana’s sell-off has been influenced by the collapse of FTX, as its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was a well-known $SOL supporter. His exchange’s balance sheet revealed that it had significant exposure to the Solana ecosystem, including to several illiquid tokens.
At the time of writing, Litecoin is the 15th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after moving up nearly 17% over the past seven days, and around 11% over the last 24-hour period. The cryptocurrency is currently trading at $67 per token.
Also read: How Long Does it Take to Mine 1 Litecoin?
Solana, on the other hand, has lost around 23.7% of its value over the last seven days and its market capitalization is now little over $4.1 billion. Over the past 24-hour period, $SOL lost around 6% of its value amid a wider market sell-off.
While the #crypto market is experiencing yet another down day, #Litecoin $LTC is holding up surprisingly well with positive social + market activity relative to other majors.
— LunarCrush (@LunarCrush) November 21, 2022
👉 Insights: https://t.co/48HFk9VRIJ pic.twitter.com/rnvB5c7TbK
Much like BTC, Litecoin undergoes halving events, in which the coinbase reward for miners who find blocks on the network is halved. Litecoin’s next halving event is expected to occur in August 2023, and will reduce mining rewards from 12.5 LTC to 6.25 LTC. Halving events are seen as bullish, as new supply on the market is halved through them.
Image Credit
Featured image via Unsplash