Litecoin is the cryptocurrency created by Charlie Lee in 2011.
Lee, a former Google engineer, released Litecoin on 7 October 2011 through an announcement on the Bitcointalk forum. The network officially launched several days later. Litecoin was designed as a peer-to-peer digital currency inspired by Bitcoin but intended to confirm transactions more quickly.
Litecoin uses a proof-of-work system and originally employed the Scrypt hashing algorithm rather than Bitcoin’s SHA-256. Its protocol also began with a much larger maximum supply of 84 million coins. These technical differences made Litecoin one of the earliest major cryptocurrencies to adapt Bitcoin’s basic design.
Litecoin is often confused with Dogecoin because both use Scrypt-based mining and later developed active online communities. Dogecoin, however, was created separately by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer in 2013. Litecoin’s creator is Charlie Lee, who later worked at Coinbase before focusing more heavily on Litecoin development.