The growth of litecoin has always been consistent with various progressions in its network.

Even though many investors believe that bitcoin is the best cryptocurrency, other cryptos also merit recognition. For instance, litecoin is one of the cryptos that has consolidated its position in the market within a short period of time. It is one of the most correlated altcoins with bitcoin. According to a survey, almost 10% of the crypto investors own litecoin, which makes it the fourth most popular cryptocurrency. Currently, several companies and financial institutions have taken a real interest in its viability as a long-term investment.

Among the oldest cryptocurrencies, litecoin is one of the most popular altcoins that is in circulation. According to the coin market cap, LTC is the 14th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with an overall value of US$18.753 billion. Litecoin's value has experienced wild swings over the past 10 years. Spikes in its price have been quickly followed by sell-offs. What does this mean for the aspiring litecoin investors? Should this crypto be considered a viable investment option? Well, considering it an investment option, crypto traders must learn about its evolution.

The Evolution of Litecoin

In simple terms, litecoin is a digital currency that uses peer-to-peer technology that allows its investors to send payments anywhere in the world. It was created by Charlie Lee in 2011. Since then, the asset has constantly been one of the top preferences of crypto analysts and market researchers.

Two years after the launch of bitcoin, Charlie Lee created litecoin. He wanted the asset to be faster and more efficient than BTC. So, while litecoin shared the same blockchain network as bitcoin, it still had some notable differences. The blockchain technology used by LTC was four times faster than the BTC, additionally, it uses a lot fewer resources than the latter, which means that the miners could mine LTC without spending much on energy.

All these advantages helped the LTC creators to build a small active community of investors in 2013. Later in the year, its price sky-rocketed after Coinbase helped but the coin's notoriety. A few years later, in 2017, Coinbase listed litecoin, followed by its record-breaking price rally in that year.

Since then, litecoin has been used as a test network for new features that are to be added to BTC. Even today, litecoin facilitates the tests of several new projects, that are to be implemented in bitcoin.

But does its evolution make LTC a viable option for long-term investment?

Consistently ranking in the top 15 cryptocurrencies, litecoin is relatively more stable than compared to other altcoins that were created around that time. The asset is widely known for its lightning-fast transaction times. Also, each LTC coin takes just about 3% of the energy that is originally taken to process one BTC transaction. More than 3,000 businesses and stores globally accept litecoin, and it is also listed in almost every transaction exchange.

When it comes to the reliability of the underlying software, investors can rest easy knowing it is one of the oldest cryptos and was essentially created as a fork in the bitcoin blockchain.

There is yet another exciting feature that developers are implementing, which includes privacy-enhancing features for the network. Overall, litecoin is beginning to gain a strong footing in the hypercompetitive cryptocurrency ecosystem and is transforming itself into something more worthwhile, due to which investors may consider LTC as worthy of long-term investment.