If You Invested $500 in Litecoin in 2016, Here’s How Much You Would Have Now

For individuals who keep in mind the early days of crypto, there weren’t almost as many tokens as there are actually.

There have been the pioneers like Bitcoin (BTC -0.08%) and Ethereum (ETH -0.31%), which nonetheless dominate the headlines as we speak. After which after all there was a batch of altcoins that most likely acquired extra consideration again then than they do now as a result of they had been among the first altcoins on the time. A type of was Litecoin (LTC -0.60%), which continues to be alive and doing in addition to any cryptocurrency can, contemplating the present state of the trade this yr.

Litecoin acquired its begin all the best way again in 2011, and regardless of the sell-off this yr nonetheless has near a $4.7 billion market cap, making it the 14th-largest cryptocurrency as we speak. If you happen to had invested $500 in Litecoin in 2016, here is how a lot you’d have now.

Picture supply: Getty Pictures.

An OG altcoin

Litecoin was developed by former Google engineer Charles Lee as a response to Bitcoin. When Lee began the community and coin, he referred to it as a “lite model of Bitcoin.” The code can also be a modified model of Bitcoin’s open-source code.

The community does have a number of similarities to Bitcoin. For example, Litecoin nonetheless operates on a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism, by which miners on the community attempt to remedy a cryptographic puzzle as shortly as doable to get the chance to confirm transactions in a block. In return for his or her service, the miner that’s chosen receives a reward in Litecoin cash. Nevertheless, Litecoin makes use of a less-energy-intensive PoW consensus mechanism than Bitcoin.

Additionally like Bitcoin, Litecoin does have a finite provide — 84 million Litecoin cash in comparison with Bitcoin’s 21 million. Roughly 70 million Litecoin cash have already been issued, however the final Litecoin coin nonetheless is not anticipated to be issued for one more 100 years.

One massive distinction between Litecoin and Bitcoin is that Litecoin can course of 54 transactions per second (TPS), in comparison with Bitcoin, which might solely do lower than 10. When Litecoin first got here out, this was thought-about a giant deal as a result of cost networks must deal with a variety of TPS if they’re going to have the ability to scale and keep away from the congestion that slows the community and ends in excessive utilization charges. For example, Visa, the most important cost rail on the planet, is able to processing 24,000 TPS.

When it comes to value motion, whereas Litecoin is valued a lot lower than Bitcoin, it has largely moved in tandem with the world’s most precious crypto, as so many cryptocurrencies do.

Bitcoin Price knowledge by YCharts

If you happen to invested $500 in Litecoin in 2016…

A number of years in the past, I feel Litecoin was a a lot larger deal than it’s as we speak. Now there are a variety of networks that may course of extra TPS than Litecoin. That mentioned, I feel as one of many older cryptocurrencies, Litecoin will proceed to get a variety of respect due to its legitimacy, which is a giant deal proper now after the collapse of crypto trade FTX.

If you happen to had invested $500 in Litecoin in 2016, you’ve got carried out fairly nicely. On the finish of November 2016, Litecoin traded for simply $3.86.

Right this moment, it trades for greater than $65, which suggests traders that acquired in on the token in late 2016 have seen a return of roughly 1,592% versus 72% for the S&P 500 Index. Which means $500 invested again then is price about $8,460 as we speak.