Happy Litecoin’s 8th birthday.

8 years ago today the Litecoin network was launched publicly on Thursday 13 October at 03:00 GMT. Earlier this week we celebrated Litecoin’s Genesis, marking the day the first Litecoin block was mined on the network. It contains the following message:

“@NY Times October 5, 2011 Apple pioneer Steve Jobs dies at age 56”

To confirm that this ‘genesis is valid’, two additional blocks were subsequently mined and the network client and binary were published ahead of time.

“People have had time to compile the source and run the client on their own machines against the Litecoin testnet. So people could make sure everything was working before launch.”

All that was needed to launch the network was the release of the Genesis hash. The exact date and time this hash was released was published on October 9, 2011 in a survey titled ‘When should Litecoin be launched?’ This is to allow the community to voice their opinions and ensure fairness in launch.

“We wanted to be fair, so there are four options, spaced six hours apart over a 24-hour day. Vote when it’s most convenient for you.”

The largest block of 39 of the 91 participants was voted on at 03:00 GMT on Thursday 13 October. Litecoin founder Charlie Lee publicly released the Genesis Hash on the Bitcoin Talk forum, one minute before Litecoin officially launched.

block_nTime=1317972665 block_nNonce=2084524493

The level of user interest was greatly underestimated, and due to the low mining difficulty, blocks were mined every 10 to 20 seconds rather than the initially planned 2.5 minutes. However, this was soon resolved as the difficulty level adjusted to higher hash rates.

Eight years later, the network, now valued at more than $3.5 billion, is still going stronger than ever. Earlier this year we reported record highs in terms of network hash rate and earlier this week we reported that Litecoin was the second best performing large market cap crypto asset of 2019, alongside Bitcoin. This represents a 90% YTD increase despite the larger footprint. Bear market.

A lot has happened in the last eight years. We’ve seen two major bull market cycles that have catapulted cryptocurrencies to the forefront of public consciousness, as well as the emergence of new technologies like Segwit, Lightning, and MimbleWimble, improving the usability and prospects of the space.

We don’t know what the future holds, but we will be on this journey with you and looking forward to every moment.

Happy Birthday Litecoin.