One of the most prominent altcoins, Litecoin,  was created by Google former employee and Director of Engineering at Coinbase, Charlie Lee.

At first Charlie Lee was trying to revive a coin called Fairbrix. Unfortunately, it was a failure because of an error that stopped Fairbrix blocks from producing coins, as well as a 51% attack since its re-release. Nevertheless,  Charlie did not give up. Finally on October 7, 2011, Charlie released an open-source client on GitHub called “Litecoin.”

He took the main ideas for Bitcoin – a currency created by an pseudonymous character, which bears the name Satoshi Nakamoto – and improved them. Litecoin was designed in an effort to keep the digital currency from becoming scarce and too expensive.It processes transactions faster and besides this cryptocurrency lets regular folks more easily “mine” coins.

The prominent altcoin project is currently supported by a group of approximately 5 core software developers led by Charles Lee and a group called the Litecoin Association that exists “to improve the Litecoin experience for entrepreneurs, investors, consumers, and the general public by facilitating communication between members of the community, aiding educational efforts, and protecting important community resources.”

Presently, Litecoin has 4 obvious benefits over Bitcoin:

1. Speed –  Litecoin is confirmed faster thanBitcoin, because it generates a block every 2.5 minutes, unlike Bitcoin 10 minutes . This means that you get your money faster.
2. Liquidity – it will produce a total of 84 million coins, unlike Bitcoin’s 21 million. This means that it will be more available for daily purchases.
3. Equality – Litecoin miners use a kind of different mining protocol, which creates a more equitable distribution of coins.
4. Technology – it is able to test and implement the technology faster than Bitcoin. For instance, Litecoin pioneered a technology called Segregated Witness. This technology is significant, because it allows you to scale both Bitcoin and Litecoin, making them faster and creating lower transaction fees.

It’s important to note that the new cryptocurrency was created to complement, not replace Bitcoin. Charlie thinks that Bitcoin should be regarded as gold; the value of the store. It should be used for large purchases such as cars or ships, because it is so expensive and takes more time to confirm. On the other hand, this cryptocurrency should be used for daily purchases, such as food. Thus, Charlie suggests that both cryptocurrencies coexist together, serving different purchasing goals.