Historically, only governments and central banks have been trusted to issue money. Like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, Litecoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer (P2P) virtual currency on an open-source global payment network, which means that it is not issued by—or even regulated by—a government. Instead, the only way to release new LTCs into circulation is through a process known as mining. To “mint” new coins, miners in a mining pool download special software and compete with other miners to solve complex mathematic equations. The first miner with sufficient computing power to crack the code is rewarded with a block of litecoins, plus any transaction fees present in the block. Every time a new block is generated, it is validated by all the competing miners, a new mathematic equation is introduced, and another mining process begins.