Litecoin was launched in 2011.
Google engineer Charlie Lee released Litecoin’s open-source client on October 7, 2011. It was designed as a Bitcoin-derived cryptocurrency with different technical settings, and it quickly became one of the earliest major alternatives to Bitcoin. Litecoin is often nicknamed “the silver to Bitcoin’s gold.”
Litecoin uses the Scrypt proof-of-work algorithm instead of Bitcoin’s SHA-256. Its target block time is 2.5 minutes, compared with Bitcoin’s 10 minutes, allowing transactions to receive block confirmations more frequently. Litecoin also has a maximum supply of 84 million coins, four times Bitcoin’s 21 million limit.
The nearby years can cause confusion because Dogecoin appeared in 2013 and Bitcoin Cash launched in 2017. Litecoin’s 2011 launch places it among the first generation of cryptocurrencies created after Bitcoin.