Litecoin is a cryptocurrency launched in late 2011 by former Google and Coinbase engineer Charlie Lee. To create Litecoin, Lee copied the Bitcoin codebase, increased the total supply, and changed the speed at which new blocks are added to the blockchain. Only approximately 84 million litecoins will ever be created, quadruple the total bitcoin supply. Litecoin also creates new blocks every 2.5 minutes, four times faster than Bitcoin. The Litecoin investor and developer communities view the protocol as a complementary pseudo-testnet for Bitcoin and a “digital silver” to Bitcoin’s “digital gold”. The Litecoin foundation stewards the Litecoin project and finances Litecoin Core development.