Litecoin, Dogecoin and Bitcoin Cash: What Sets Them Apart

Three of the older coins you can sell for naira all trace back to Bitcoin, each in a different way. One was built as a lighter, quicker cousin. One was built as a joke. And one came out of an argument so heated that it split Bitcoin in two.

They also get mixed up with each other, and with Bitcoin, more often than you'd think. Maybe you bought some DOGE during the 2021 buzz and it's still sitting in an old exchange account. Maybe a friend paid you back in LTC. Either way, here's what sets these coins apart and how to turn each into naira without an expensive mistake.

At a glance

	Litecoin (LTC)	Dogecoin (DOGE)	Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
Launched	2011	2013	2017
Created by	Charlie Lee	Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer	A split (hard fork) from Bitcoin
New block roughly every	2.5 minutes	1 minute	10 minutes
Maximum supply	84 million LTC	No cap	21 million BCH
Best known for	Bitcoin-style payments, quicker	Internet culture and tipping	Big blocks for cheap payments
Addresses usually start with	L, M or ltc1	D	q or p (sometimes with "bitcoincash:" in front), older ones 1 or 3

Block times are averages, so individual blocks can come faster or slower.

Litecoin: Bitcoin's lighter sibling

Charlie Lee, a software engineer at Google at the time, launched Litecoin in October 2011, starting from Bitcoin's code with a few deliberate changes: blocks about four times as often, four times the maximum supply, and a different mining method called Scrypt. Early fans called it "silver to Bitcoin's gold", and the nickname stuck.

What people use it for: sending value more quickly than Bitcoin, usually with low fees, and moving money between exchanges. Litecoin has also adopted some upgrades before Bitcoin did, including SegWit in 2017, so developers have sometimes treated it as a proving ground.

The honest view: Litecoin doesn't make headlines the way newer chains do. Its appeal is that it's old, simple and has kept working for a long time. Whether that's worth holding is your call, but it's a familiar, well-understood coin.

Dogecoin: the joke that stuck

In December 2013, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer created Dogecoin as a joke, a light-hearted poke at the crypto hype of the time, with the Shiba Inu "doge" meme as its face. It was built on code that traces back to Litecoin, so it uses Scrypt mining too, and since 2014 it has been possible to mine it alongside Litecoin.

Two things make Dogecoin unusual:

• No supply cap. New DOGE is created with every block, and that never stops. Bitcoin's selling point is a fixed supply; Dogecoin deliberately went the other way.
• Community first. Early users tipped each other small amounts online, and the community crowdfunded causes, most famously helping send Jamaica's bobsleigh team to the 2014 Winter Olympics.

What people use it for: tipping, small payments, and above all speculation. Dogecoin's price has been moved again and again by social media trends and celebrity posts. It's the original memecoin, and our guide on why memecoins pump and why most crash applies to it more than to the other two.

The honest view: DOGE has lasted far longer than most coins born as jokes, but its price runs on attention. Hold it only with money you can watch drop sharply without panicking.

Bitcoin Cash: the block size split

By 2017, Bitcoin was busy and fees were rising. The community disagreed about the fix. One side wanted bigger blocks, so more transactions could fit into each one directly on the blockchain. The other side wanted to keep blocks small and add capacity in other ways.

On 1 August 2017, the big-block side went its own way and Bitcoin Cash was born through a hard fork, starting with blocks eight times bigger than Bitcoin's 1MB limit (later raised further). Anyone holding Bitcoin at that moment ended up with the same amount of BCH as well. If you want the earlier part of the story, read the story of Bitcoin in five minutes.

What people use it for: cheap, everyday payments made directly on its blockchain. It keeps Bitcoin's 21 million cap, ten-minute blocks and halvings.

The honest view: the name causes most of the trouble. Bitcoin Cash is a different coin from Bitcoin, priced differently, on a separate blockchain.

The mix-ups that cost people money

• BCH is not BTC. Never send Bitcoin to a Bitcoin Cash address, or the other way round. Older BCH addresses start with 1 or 3, exactly like Bitcoin addresses, so the format alone can fool you. Always copy the address from that specific coin's wallet.
• "LTC" or "DOGE" on another network. Some exchanges list versions of these coins on other blockchains, such as BNB Smart Chain. Those are tokens that represent the coin, not the coin on its own network. Send on the network the receiving app shows, nothing else.
• Old wallets. Coins left in a wallet app you haven't opened in years may need you to restore it with your recovery phrase before you can send. Find the phrase before you need the money.

Not sure which coin an address belongs to? Paste it into our crypto address checker before you send.

Which one, if any?

None of these three is a replacement for money you need to keep steady. If you're holding funds for December rent or next term's school fees, a coin that can swing 20% in a week is the wrong tool; a stablecoin is built for that job.

If you hold LTC, DOGE or BCH because you believe in them, or simply because you have some, treat them as risky assets and size them that way: an amount you could see fall by half without it touching your rent, school fees or emergency money.

How to sell LTC, DOGE or BCH for naira

The steps are the same for all three:

1. In the KWIQ app, open the wallet for the coin you're selling: LTC, DOGE or BCH.
2. Copy the deposit address and note the network shown next to it.
3. In the exchange or wallet you're sending from, choose the same coin and the same network, paste the address and check the first and last characters.
4. Send a small test first if you've never used that address before.
5. Once the deposit is confirmed on the blockchain, sell. You'll see the rate and the naira amount before you confirm, and swapping crypto to naira is free on KWIQ.
6. Withdraw to any Nigerian bank account, OPay, PalmPay, Kuda and Moniepoint included.

Coin-by-coin guides: sell Litecoin for naira, sell Dogecoin for naira and sell Bitcoin Cash for naira. Today's prices for all three are on the crypto to naira rates page.

See what yours are worth

A little DOGE left over from 2021, or LTC a friend sent you last week: either way, the naira figure is easy to check. Download the KWIQ app, open the coin's wallet and check the naira figure before you decide. Short on phone storage? Create a free account on the web instead.