LitecoinLitecoin (Abbreviation: LTC; sign: Ł) is a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open-source software project released under the MIT/X11 license. Inspired by Bitcoin, Litecoin was among the earliest altcoins, starting in October 2011. In technical details, the Litecoin main chain shares a slightly modified Bitcoin codebase. The practical effects of those codebase differences are lower transaction fees, faster transaction confirmations, and faster mining difficulty retargeting.
CoinbaseCoinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work. It is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States by trading volume. The company was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. In May 2020, Coinbase announced it would shut its San Francisco, California headquarters and change operations to remote-first, part of a wave of several major tech companies closing headquarters in San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cryptocurrency bubbleA cryptocurrency bubble is a phenomenon where the market increasingly considers the going price of cryptocurrency assets to be inflated against their hypothetical value. The history of cryptocurrency has been marked by several speculative bubbles. Some economists and prominent investors have expressed the view that the entire cryptocurrency market constitutes a speculative bubble. Adherents of this view include Berkshire Hathaway board member Warren Buffett and several laureates of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, central bankers, and investors.
Decentralized financeDecentralized finance (often stylized as DeFi) offers financial instruments without relying on intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks by using smart contracts on a blockchain, mainly Ethereum. DeFi platforms allow people to lend or borrow funds from others, speculate on price movements on assets using derivatives, trade cryptocurrencies, insure against risks, and earn interest in savings-like accounts. DeFi uses a layered architecture and highly composable building blocks.
