What Is Litecoin (LTC)? Supply, Liquidity and Market Structure

What is Litecoin? It is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency with a 2.5-minute block time and an 84 million coin cap. For a trader the working fact is how closely it follows Bitcoin: over the 90 days to 18 October 2026 LTC's daily returns correlated 0.61 with BTC's, with a beta of 0.95, while its average daily range was 4.36%, 1.6 times Bitcoin's 2.73%.

Every number below is computed from dated data or taken from a source we fetched on 19 October 2026.

What is Litecoin and how does it work

The Litecoin Core README calls it "an experimental digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world", run peer to peer with no central authority. The consensus rules live in the open source code, and we read them there (checked 19 October 2026):

• Block time: the target spacing is 2.5 minutes, and difficulty retargets over a 3.5-day window, which is 2,016 blocks.
• Proof of work: block hashes use scrypt, not Bitcoin's SHA-256.
• Cap: MAX_MONEY is 84,000,000 coins.
• Halving: the chain parameters set a halving interval of 840,000 blocks, from a starting reward of 50 LTC.
• MWEB: the source includes the MWEB deployment (LIP-0002 to LIP-0004). CoinGecko files LTC under "Proof of Work (PoW)", "Layer 1 (L1)" and "Privacy", with a genesis date of 8 October 2011.

Payments are the use case. In the 24 hours before we checked, Blockchair counted 163,313 Litecoin transactions with an average fee of about $0.003.

How LTC trades: the 90-day fingerprint

We took every 1h LTCUSDT candle on Binance from 21 July to 18 October 2026 (2,160 candles) and averaged the high-to-low range for each UTC hour.

• Average daily range: 4.36%. Bitcoin's was 2.73% over the same 90 daily candles. The median LTC day was 3.71%. 59 of 90 days (66%) ranged above 3%, 24 days (27%) above 5% and 3 days (3%) above 10%.
• Busiest hour: 14:00 UTC (17:00 MSK), averaging 1.29% per hour, then 15:00 (1.14%) and 13:00 (1.11%).
• Quietest hours: 23:00, 06:00 and 07:00 UTC at 0.69%, 0.71% and 0.72% (02:00, 09:00 and 10:00 MSK). The peak is 1.9 times the quietest hour.
• By session (our UTC buckets): 13:00 to 21:00 averages 0.97% per hour, against 0.85% for 08:00 to 13:00, 0.82% for 00:00 to 08:00 and 0.81% for 21:00 to midnight.

The busy window is the European afternoon running into the US open. The trading sessions tool shows those hours in your time zone; the best time to trade crypto study uses the same method.

By UTC weekday, Thursday was widest at 5.19% average range, then Friday (5.10%) and Monday (4.71%). Sunday was narrowest at 3.65%. Weekend days averaged 3.76% against 4.61% on weekdays (see weekend crypto trading). Thursday's number leans on one day: 24 September ranged 21.3% and closed 16.3% above its open. The next widest were 21 August (13.4%, closing +11.2%) and 7 September (10.1%, +0.4%). We attach no news to them: we have no dated source for one.

LTC's year in numbers

LTC closed at 93.33 on 19 October 2025 and at 59.12 on 18 October 2026: down 36.7%, while BTC fell 24.4% over the same days. The LTC/BTC ratio fell 16.2%. Closes every three months were 93.33, 72.29, 54.06 and 47.07 (19 October 2025, 18 January, 19 April, 19 July).

• Highest close in the window: 110.31 on 9 November 2025. The last close sits 46.4% below it, 343 days later.
• Lowest close: 40.92 on 25 June 2026, a 62.9% fall from that peak, the deepest we measured on daily closes.
• Since the low: the last close is 44.5% above it. Over the last 90 days LTC gained 24.8% (from an open of 47.36) against 25.8% for BTC.

CoinGecko (19 October 2026) lists an all-time high of $410.26 on 9 May 2021. Its price that morning was $59.96, 85% below that high.

LTC supply, issuance and halvings

CoinGecko on 19 October 2026: 77.73 million LTC circulating, an 84 million maximum supply and a $4.66 billion market cap, rank 24. 92.5% of the cap circulates, so about 6.27 million LTC remain to be issued. CoinGecko's fully diluted valuation ($4.66 billion) matches the market cap because total supply is almost identical to circulating supply.

New coins come only from block rewards. At block 3,197,790 (the tip on 19 October 2026 at about 10:08 UTC, per litecoinspace.org), the reward has been halved three times, from 50 to 6.25 LTC. The next halving is at block 3,360,000, 162,210 blocks away. At the 2.5-minute target that is about 282 days, but blocks do not arrive exactly on target: Blockchair counted 637 in the past 24 hours against 576 at the target pace, and 3,981 LTC issued in that day. We give no halving date, only the block height. We found no dated unlock calendar for LTC; issuance is set in code, so there is none to publish.

Where LTC trades

We read 24-hour spot volume from the public tickers of nine venues on 19 October 2026 at about 10:10 UTC. Kraken and Coinbase report volume in LTC, converted at Kraken's 24h average price and Coinbase's last price, so those two are approximate.

Binance printed $19.7 million, 27% of the $71.8 million across the nine. KuCoin followed at $12.3 million (17%), then Bybit ($8.2 million), Gate, Coinbase, OKX, MEXC, Kraken and Bitget. All nine venues together turned over about 1.5% of LTC's market cap in a day. Coinbase and Kraken, the two venues here with USD books, carried about 16% between them. New exchange listings are tracked on our listings page.

Derivatives are larger than spot. The Binance LTCUSDT perpetual traded $78.4 million in 24 hours, 4.0 times Binance spot, and the Bybit perpetual turned over $23.4 million with $66.1 million of open interest.

LTC vs BTC

Over the 90 days, its daily returns correlated 0.61 with Bitcoin's, and a regression slope (beta) of 0.95 says a 1% BTC move came with about a 0.95% LTC move. Over the full year the figures were 0.71 and 0.93. On the 47 days BTC closed up it averaged +1.47% and LTC +1.65%. On the 42 days BTC closed down it averaged -1.11% and LTC -1.20%. LTC moved in the same direction as BTC on 65 of 89 days (73%) and beat it on 44 (49%).

A 0.61 correlation means about 37% of the variance of LTC's daily move (0.61 squared) lines up with Bitcoin's. One day carries much of the rest. On 24 September LTC rose 16.35% while BTC closed flat (+0.01%). Without that day the 90-day correlation is 0.74 and the beta 0.96. For the benchmark itself, read the Bitcoin guide and the BTC market page.

The 30-day correlation peaked at 0.88 on 22 August, slipped to 0.69 by 5 September, held near 0.70 until 19 September, and dropped to 0.46 on 24 September, the day of the 16% move. It touched 0.44 on 4 October, recovered to 0.55 on 17 October and ended at 0.47. Excluding 24 September, the 30-day reading would be 0.77. That day leaves the window after 23 October, so the line will move again without LTC doing anything new.

Reading LTC's structure

The chart shows LTCUSDT on the 1h timeframe from 15 October to 10:00 UTC on 19 October 2026, with the BiasNex engine's structure events and the previous-day levels (18 October): high 60.04 and low 56.71.

At 15:00 UTC on 17 October the engine marked an internal bearish change of character at 59.18 (the same candle also marked an external bearish break at 59.12). At 15:00 UTC on 18 October it marked an internal bearish break of structure at 58.6. Price then fell to 56.71 that evening and rose about 5.8% back to 60.02 by 10:10 UTC on 19 October, just under the 60.04 previous-day high. At that time the engine's 1h label read bias bearish, context trend, with ATR at 0.80% of price and volatility MED. Read it against market structure: the recovery has reached the 18 October high, but the engine had not yet marked a bullish break. LTC does not have a live page under our markets section yet.

Risks

• Bitcoin dependence. With a 0.61 correlation and 0.95 beta, a BTC drawdown usually comes with an LTC drawdown. Our year data shows LTC falling 36.7% against BTC's 24.4%.
• Range. At 4.36% a day, with a 21.3% day in the sample, stops sized from major coins get hit. Size from the stop with the position size calculator.
• Unstable correlation. The 30-day figure ranged from 0.88 to 0.44 in two months.
• Derivatives dominate. Binance's perpetual alone is 4.0 times its spot volume, so liquidation cascades can move price in either direction.
• Halving timing. The block height is fixed, the date is not.

More coins in the same format are in the Coin Library.

FAQ

What is Litecoin used for? Mainly peer-to-peer payments and trading. Blockchair counted 163,313 transactions at an average fee of about $0.003 in 24 hours (19 October 2026).

How many Litecoin will there ever be? The source code caps supply at 84 million. CoinGecko lists 77.73 million as circulating on 19 October 2026, about 92.5% of the cap.

When is the next Litecoin halving? At block 3,360,000. The tip was block 3,197,790 on 19 October 2026, so 162,210 blocks remain. The date depends on how fast blocks arrive, so we do not give one.

Does Litecoin follow Bitcoin? Closely but not tightly. Over 90 days the daily-return correlation was 0.61 and the beta 0.95.