In today’s “Crypto for Advisors” newsletter, Canary Capital’s Josh Olszewicz discusses Litecoin from its history to its growth.
Then, in “Ask an Expert,” Institution’s Billy Luedtke answers questions about decentralized finance and its growth.
Thanks to our sponsor of this week’s newsletter, Grayscale. For financial advisors near Denver, Grayscale will host an exclusive event, Crypto Connect, on Thursday, October 23. Learn more.
– Sara Morton
Litecoin: a long-term resilient digital asset
It is one of the oldest and most established cryptocurrencies that is still actively used. Created in October 2011 by former Google engineer Charlie Lee, Litecoin was released as a fork of Bitcoin’s source code. While Bitcoin pioneered decentralized digital money, Litecoin sought to improve its design by offering faster settlement times, lower transaction costs, and greater supply. For this reason, It is often referred to as “the silver of bitcoin.” gold.”
Key technical features
Litecoin shares Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) foundation, but differs in several critical areas. Its blocking time is 2.5 minutes, compared to Bitcoin’s 10 minutes, allowing for faster transaction confirmations. The maximum supply is 84 million coins, four times larger than Bitcoin’s 21 million, making individual units more accessible. Instead of Bitcoin’s SHA-256 mining algorithm, Litecoin employs Scrypt, which was designed to make mining more accessible before the advent of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).
Since its inception, Litecoin has maintained uninterrupted network uptime, a rarity in the blockchain sector. This reliability, combined with low transaction fees that average less than 10 cents, has positioned Litecoin as a practical medium of exchange rather than primarily a store of value.
Innovation and adoption
Litecoin has also been one of the first testing grounds for key blockchain innovations. In 2017, it became the first major network to activate Segregated Witness (SegWit), a scalable upgrade that optimizes block space and resolves transaction malleability. Shortly after, Litecoin helped pioneer the Lightning Network (LN), a second-layer protocol that enables instant, near-zero-cost payments. The first cross-chain Lightning transaction, routing LTC to BTC, took place shortly after SegWit was activated.
Security has also been strengthened through a merged mining agreement with since 2014. By sharing hash power between the two Scrypt-based networks, both ecosystems benefit from stronger protection against potential 51% attacks.
Supply dynamics and network health
Litecoin’s issuance schedule mirrors that of Bitcoin, with rewards halving every four years. More than 90% of the total supply of 84 million LTC has already been mined and annual inflation is below 2%. The next halving, scheduled for July 2027, will reduce inflation to below 1%, comparable to many traditional safe haven assets.
The on-chain activity reflects the constant use of Litecoin. Transaction counts have increased during periods of Bitcoin congestion and spikes in Dogecoin demand. Active addresses have demonstrated resilience over time, highlighting their relative usefulness compared to peer networks.
The hash rate, the measure of computing power protecting the blockchain, has increased in recent years, supported by increased efficiency of Scrypt ASICs and the incentive of combined litecoin and dogecoin mining rewards. Mining power remains concentrated in a handful of pools, but overall network security has never been higher.
Valuation metrics
Two widely followed cryptocurrency valuation tools, the network value to transactions ratio (NVT) and the market value to realized value ratio (MVRV), provide context for Litecoin’s current position. NVT, which measures market capitalization relative to on-chain activity, ranks below bitcoin and dogecoin, suggesting that litecoin may be more fairly valued relative to its utility. Meanwhile, MVRV, which compares the market price to the average price at which coins last moved, remains below long-term bull market levels, indicating moderate speculative excess.
External sentiment indicators confirm this panorama. Google Trends data for “Litecoin” has steadily declined since its 2021 peak, pointing to lower retail enthusiasm. However, these conditions have historically aligned with undervalued entry points in previous market cycles.
Conclusions for financial advisors
For advisors assessing the digital asset landscape, Litecoin represents a case study in durability. It has operated continuously for over a decade, survived multiple market crises and consistently delivered on its value proposition: fast, reliable and low-cost transactions. While it does not dominate the Bitcoin brand domain or the Ethereum smart contract ecosystem, Litecoin plays a complementary role within the broader digital asset market.
In portfolio construction, Litecoin can be considered as:
- A diversification tool within a cryptocurrency allocation, offering exposure to a non-Bitcoin network but with a proven security model.
- A lower beta play on transaction-focused cryptocurrencies, with relatively quiet speculation compared to meme-driven assets like dogecoin.
- A long-term reserve of utility, benefiting from declining issuance and steady adoption, even amid changing market narratives.
For customers exploring digital assets, Litecoin stands as one of the most tested and resilient networks in the industry. Its combination of security, innovation, and practical utility underlines why it continues to be a key component of the crypto ecosystem.
– Josh Olszewicz, Portfolio Manager, Canary Capital
ask an expert
Q. Decentralized finance (DeFi) has experienced explosive growth, hype cycles, and is now moving towards maturity. From your perspective, what is the biggest gap still preventing DeFi from being widely adopted?
A. DeFi has proven that trustless code can automate financial services at scale. But code alone is not enough. Even in a “trustless” system, participants constantly rely on trust: that smart contracts are secure, that oracle data is accurate, that a counterparty is not malicious, and that audits address the right risks. Because on-chain transactions are irreversible, failures in those trust assumptions can be catastrophic.
What DeFi lacks is a trusted interaction layer to complement trustless execution. Protocols don’t know who is on the other side of a transaction and whether their information is credible. There is no native way to verify identity, reputation, or history in a structured, verifiable format. This leaves users vulnerable, prevents protocols from assessing creditworthiness, and deters institutions.
Closing this gap requires an infrastructure that makes the information itself verifiable and composable. At Intuition, we’re building exactly that: a layer of trust and reputation for DeFi and the information economy at large.
Q. Many people talk about DeFi needing better ways to manage reputation, creditworthiness, and trust. What do you think are the most promising approaches to solving those challenges?
Certifications have been part of Ethereum’s DNA from the beginning; the original whitepaper even highlighted identity as a primary use case. For more than a decade, builders have experimented with certifications or chain-signed statements to build trust. However, until now they have been limited to small flows: demonstrating a single credential or verifying one fact at a time.
What is missing is making certifications usable at scale in richer contexts. Instead of simply asking “does this address hold this credential?”, we should be able to analyze thousands or even millions of complaints to understand an entity’s reputation. That’s the missing layer.
At Intuition, we’re building exactly that: a certification graph that makes verifiable data portable and usable. By connecting certifications into a graph, smart contracts and AI agents can reason about history, context, and reputation, unlocking credit scores, unsecured loans, access control, and permissionless reputation markets.
Q. Looking ahead, what kind of DeFi applications or innovations do you think will define the next wave of growth and how could infrastructure like verifiable data or reputation systems play a role?
The next wave of DeFi won’t just be limited to moving capital faster; It will be about moving trust forward more quickly. Smart contracts gave us trustless execution, but the missing piece is verifiable context about who and what we are dealing with.
When certifications and reputation can reliably exist on-chain, DeFi evolves beyond being purely collateral-based. Unsecured loans become possible, access to funds can be controlled by reputation rather than arbitrary whitelists, and governance can reward real contributions rather than idle token balances. Entire markets open up for reputation itself, where the credibility of an address or set of data can be valued, traded or bet on based on results.
This is also what AI agents will need as they move from executing trades to making complex decisions under uncertainty. A verifiable graph of trust and reputation provides the foundation.
– Billy Luedtke, CEO of Intuition
Keep reading
- Morgan Stanley’s 16,000 advisors were authorized to offer requested cryptocurrency investments to clients this week.
- JP Morgan plans to allow access to cryptocurrencies for its clients, but will not initially offer custody.
- Citibank plans to launch cryptocurrency custody services in 2026.
