#LTC&XRPETFsNext? Litecoin, created in 2011 by Charlie Lee, is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and an early fork of Bitcoin. It's often referred to as "silver to Bitcoin's gold". Litecoin aimed to improve upon Bitcoin with a faster block generation time (2.5 minutes vs. 10 minutes), increasing the number of transactions it can process.

It also uses a different hashing algorithm (Scrypt) which was initially more resistant to specialized mining hardware (ASICs), though ASICs for Litecoin now exist. Litecoin has a larger total supply than Bitcoin (84 million vs. 21 million).

While it hasn't achieved the same level of market capitalization as Bitcoin, Litecoin remains a popular and widely traded cryptocurrency, often used for smaller transactions and as a testbed for features later implemented on Bitcoin.