Released on 7 October 2011 by former Google employee Charlie Lee, Litecoin (LTC, Ł) is an open source, peer-to-peer cryptocurrency – that is a digital currency operating independently of any country’s central bank. While similar to bitcoin in many ways, Litecoin has also incorporated several features (such as Segregated Witness) which they describe as improvements to help to reduce bottlenecks in the network and increase the speed with which transactions are carried out.Bitcoin has been criticized for its use in illegal transactions, its high electricity consumption, price volatility, thefts from exchanges, and the possibility that bitcoin is an economic bubble.Bitcoin has also been used as an investment, although several regulatory agencies have issued investor alerts about bitcoin.