Litecoin (LTC) is the fifth-largest cryptocurrency network, with a market capitalization of over $5bn. It was forked from Bitcoin (BTC) in late 2011 and is designed to be quicker and cheaper to transfer.
In 2022, it’s possible to get Litecoin (LTC) in lots of places at competitive rates directly with GBP.
But it’s still easy to get ripped off.
In this post, I’ll show you the cheapest way to buy Litecoin (LTC) in the UK with a UK bank transfer, a debit card, a credit card, or any other payment method.
Overview: Cheapest Way to Buy Litecoin
Don’t care about the details?
Here’s an overview of the cheapest places to buy Litecoin (LTC) in the UK with the 3 most popular methods.
| Best Provider | Payment Method | Fees |
|---|---|---|
| Kraken | UK Bank Transfer | Up to 0.26% |
| Coinbase (Advanced) | UK Bank Transfer | Up to 0.6% |
| CoinJar | UK Bank Transfer | 1% |
| Crypto.com | UK Bank Transfer | Variable Exchange Rate |
| Coinbase (Simple) | UK Bank Transfer | 1.5%+ |
| Gemini | UK Bank Transfer | 1.99% (if > £150) |
| CoinJar | Debit Card | 2% |
| Crypto.com | Debit Card | 2.99%+ |
| BC Bitcoin | UK Bank Transfer | 5% |
| Gemini | Debit Card | 5.48% (if > £150) |
| Solidi | UK Bank Transfer | Variable Exchange Rate |
| Bittylicious | UK Bank Transfer | Variable Exchange Rate |
This post is about how to buy Litecoin (LTC) directly with GBP in the UK.
If you want to buy Litecoin (LTC) with Bitcoin (BTC), then you’ll want to check out this list of the best places to buy Bitcoin (BTC) in the UK.
Once you have Bitcoin (BTC), you can exchange it for Litecoin (LTC) in a number of places.
Here are three options for this:
Best Ways to Buy Litecoin in the UK
1. Coinbase
Using Coinbase’s Advanced Trade interface is one of the cheapest ways to buy Litecoin (LTC) in the UK.
Coinbase was the 1st major cryptocurrency exchange to accept GBP deposits through the UK Faster Payments Service (FPS). This means deposits to Coinbase will usually be credited in less than an hour. But after that, I’ve found that Coinbase has consistently processed my GBP deposits within minutes.
While it’s easier to use Coinbase’s Simple interface, you’ll pay higher fees (about 2% if you buy or sell more than £200 at a time).
But if you switch to using Coinbase’s Advanced interface, you’ll be able to buy Litecoin (LTC) at the REAL market rate while incurring lower fees (up to 0.6%). You’ll pay lower fees if you’re a market maker.
Fees to withdraw your Litecoin (LTC) from Coinbase to somewhere else (e.g., a hardware wallet) don’t cost much either. However, that’s the same in most places.
Coinbase WebsiteCoinbase Review
A market maker is someone who provides liquidity to markets.
This is done when you submit a limit order (buy or sell) on Coinbase Pro (or other cryptocurrency exchanges) that doesn’t immediately fill. These orders sit on the order book and prevent wild fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices. For this reason, market makers are incentivized by reduced fees on exchanges.
When you submit a market order (buy or sell) on a cryptocurrency exchange that immediately fills, you are a market taker. For this added convenience, you’ll pay a slightly higher fee than market makers on some exchanges.
With a desktop browser, you can toggle between the Simple and Advanced Trade interfaces on Coinbase by going to the ‘Trade’ area and selecting either ‘Simple’ or ‘Advanced’ at the top of the page.
The Simple interface is where Coinbase are acting as a cryptocurrency broker. As the name might suggest, it has been designed to be as intuitive and easy-to-use as possible – which makes it perfect for beginners. You can buy supported cryptocurrencies with a debit card, credit card, and UK bank transfer through this interface.
Coinbase’s Advanced Trade section is a cryptocurrency exchange targeted at cryptocurrency traders. The fees on Coinbase Pro are lower (up to 0.6%) than on Coinbase (at least 2%), but it can be intimidating if you’ve never used something like it before. This is a replacement of Coinbase Pro, which is being phased out in 2022.
In the long-term? I think it’s worth learning to use Coinbase’s Advanced Trade interface so you’re not paying fees that you don’t need to. And once you’ve used it a few times, you’ll probably prefer it over Coinbase’s Simple interface – I know I do!
2. CoinJar
CoinJar is a cryptocurrency platform (founded in 2013) where you can buy, sell, and store Litecoin (LTC). It also supports a number of other cryptocurrencies – like Stellar (XLM), Ripple (XRP), and Chainlink (LINK).
You can deposit GBP into CoinJar with a UK bank transfer, or instantly buy Litecoin (LTC) with a debit card.
CoinJar supports UK Faster Payments. So while your first deposit might take a little longer to process, subsequent deposits should usually be credited on CoinJar within minutes of you sending them. This is pretty awesome.
CoinJar charges a fee of just 1% when buying or selling any cryptocurrency on its platform. The Litecoin (LTC) prices you’re quoted are based on the best available price on the CoinJar Exchange. When I’ve checked recently, I’ve found that it’s near-enough the real exchange rate.
If you choose to instantly buy Litecoin (LTC) with a connected debit card, then you’ll be charged a fee of 2% instead. This is significantly lower-cost than anywhere else that allows you to buy Litecoin (LTC) with a debit card.
Read my review or head over to their website to learn more.
Best Litecoin Wallets: Safely Storing LTC
Litecoin Hardware Wallets
Just like any other altcoin, you’ll need a cryptocurrency wallet to store your Litecoin (LTC).
Hardware wallets are popular and well-recommended across the crypto-community. I’ve reviewed nearly every cryptocurrency wallet that’s available and ranked the best hardware wallet options.
One of my favourites and highest-ranked hardware wallets is the Ledger Nano S.
It continues to support more and more cryptocurrencies and can be bought from the manufacturer’s official website for less than £60 (incl. delivery).
There’s a reason it’s sold over 1.4 million units worldwide. Find out more in my full Ledger Nano S review.
Litecoin Software Wallets
Not an exhaustive list, but these options seem quite well-recommended across the Litecoin community:
- LiteWallet: Official Litecoin mobile wallet (originally built by Charlie Lee). Previously called LoafWallet.
- Atomic Wallet: My favourite multi-currency wallet which supports over 300 coins and tokens.
- Exodus Wallet: User-friendly cryptocurrency wallet which supports over 95 cryptocurrencies.
What is Litecoin (LTC)?
Litecoin (LTC) is the native cryptocurrency for the open-source Litecoin network. It was originally developed using the same framework that powers the Bitcoin network – but has a few changes that make transactions faster and cheaper.
Founded in 2011, Litecoin was the brainchild of Charlie Lee, a software engineer and early crypto adopter. Litecoin (LTC) was one of the first alternative cryptocurrencies, or altcoins, in the world. In fact, it predates one of Bitcoin’s other major competitors, Ethereum (ETH), by four years.
Here’s a short video that explains what Litecoin (LTC) is, how it works, and what makes it unique:
Since Charlie Lee designed the Litecoin network as a direct response to what he believed were major shortcomings of Bitcoin (BTC), the best way to understand what makes Litecoin (LTC) special is to consider it in comparison to its original competitor: Bitcoin (BTC).
Litecoin (LTC) was created by modifying the code to Bitcoin (BTC). As a result, the Litecoin network operates in much the same way as the Bitcoin network.
There are many similarities between the two networks, but the biggest feature that Bitcoin and Litecoin share is their Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism. This means that anyone that wants to mine Litecoin (LTC) or Bitcoin (BTC) needs to solve a computational problem in order to add a new block to the blockchain (and earn mining fees).
But Litecoin (LTC) isn’t simply a carbon copy of Bitcoin (BTC). There are some key differences between the two networks, including:
- Block Times: Within the Bitcoin network, new blocks are added to the blockchain every 10 minutes. This inherently limits the speed of the Bitcoin network and reduces the number of transactions the network can handle over time. New blocks are added to the Litecoin blockchain every 2.5 minutes. These faster block times should make Litecoin transactions much more efficient and affordable.
- Transaction Capacity: The block times of the Bitcoin and Litecoin networks have a direct impact on the number of transactions that each blockchain can handle per second. The Bitcoin network can handle about 7 transactions per second (tps) while the Litecoin network can accommodate about 56 tps. The idea behind this change is that it would make Litecoin (LTC) more scalable than Bitcoin (BTC).
- Cryptographic Algorithms: Bitcoin operates on the SHA-256 encryption algorithm while Litecoin uses Scrypt. Lee chose to use Scrypt for Litecoin because he hoped it would make expensive mining equipment, like ASIC, less effective on the Litecoin network. By making ASIC and other similar mining units less effective, Lee hoped that large-scale miners wouldn’t have as much dominance over the Litecoin network. Unfortunately, this didn’t turn out as planned – as ASICs are now able to mine Litecoin.
- Maximum Token Supply: As is the case with Bitcoin (BTC), there’s a hard limit on the total number of Litecoin (LTC) that will ever be in circulation. But while there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin (BTC) in the world, Litecoin (LTC) has a maximum supply of 84 million.
Litecoin currently brands itself as “the cryptocurrency for payments”. The network’s very fast and very affordable payments make it a potentially powerful tool for anyone that wants to quickly send money across the world or pay for goods and services using crypto.
Outside of its functionality as a payment method, there aren’t too many other popular uses for Litecoin (LTC).
Since the Litecoin network operates on a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, there’s no way to directly stake LTC on the network to earn rewards.
However, many centralised exchanges and centralised finance (CeFi) platforms now offer interest on Litecoin (LTC) that you deposit in a custodial wallet. But while this is a potential way to earn passive income on your LTC holdings, it can be extremely risky.