Litecoin: the OG that never gets its due

LTC has spent 15 years being called "Bitcoin's little brother." The label undersells it.

SegWit went live on Litecoin in May 2017, three months before Bitcoin activated it. The first real Lightning Network transaction ran on it too, cross-chain from LTC to BTC, before Bitcoin's own implementation had matured. For most of its history, this coin has been Bitcoin's testbed, not the other way around.

In 2022 it shipped MimbleWimble Extension Blocks, an opt-in confidential transactions feature – a genuine privacy upgrade few top-25 coins have actually built. It came at a cost: several South Korean exchanges delisted LTC over compliance concerns shortly after.

Fifteen years and multiple bear markets later, it's still top 25 by market cap, while most of its 2011-era peers are gone. Still one of 2,800+ assets you can swap on SimpleSwap wallet-to-wallet, no CEX layover required.

15 years of firsts and it's still holding its rank – where do you see it in the next cycle?