Charlie Lee talking about Lite Coin. Starts at about
50:45 in Episode 12.
Litecoin was released via an
open-source client on
GitHub on October 7, 2011 by Charles Lee, a former Google employee.[SUP]
[12][/SUP] It was a fork of the Bitcoin-Qt client, differing primarily by having a decreased block generation time, increased maximum number of coins, different hashing algorithm (
scrypt, instead of
SHA-256[SUP]
[13][/SUP]), and a slightly modified
GUI.
In 2013,
The Economist mentioned Litecoin as a
Bitcoin alternative, noting that it "has shot up in price of late."[SUP]
[4][/SUP]
During the month of November 2013, the aggregate value of Litecoin experienced massive growth which included a 100% leap within 24 hours.[SUP]
[14][/SUP]
Litecoin reached a $1 billion marketcap in November 2013 [SUP]
[15][/SUP] but as of February 2015, its market capitalization is back to pre-Nov 2013 levels - US$64,654,000.[SUP]
[16][/SUP]