Litecoin was released via an open-source client on GitHub on October 7, 2011 by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee. It was a fork of the Bitcoin Core client, differing primarily by having a decreased block generation time of 2.5 minutes, increased maximum number of coins, different hashing algorithm and a slightly modified GUI. During the month of November 2013, the aggregate value of Litecoin experienced massive growth which included a 100% leap within 24 hours. Litecoin reached a $1 billion market cap in November 2013. As of April 2017, its market capitalization is USD 537,700,000 with the price at $10.60 levels. Near the end of March 2017 Litecoin surged close to the $10 price level mainly thanks to talks about network scaling implementations. Litecoin offers three key differences from Bitcoin. The Litecoin Network aims to process a block every 2.5 minutes rather than Bitcoin's 10 minutes, which its developers claim allows for faster transaction confirmation. A drawback is a higher probability of orphaned blocks. Advantages can include greater resistance to a double spending attack over the same period as bitcoin. However, total work done is a consideration. For example, if the Litecoin Network has comparatively ten times less computing work done per block than the bitcoin network, the Bitcoin confirmation is around ten times harder to reverse, even though the Litecoin Network is likely to add confirmation blocks at a rate four times faster. Litecoin uses scrypt in its proof-of-work algorithm, a sequential memory-hard function requiring asymptotically more memory than an algorithm which is not memory-hard. The Litecoin Network will produce 84 million Litecoins, or four times as many currency units as will be issued by the Bitcoin Network. A peer-to-peer network resembling that of Bitcoin handles Litecoin's transactions, balances and issuance through scrypt, the proof-of-work scheme. The rate halves every 840,000 blocks, roughly every four years, reaching a final total of 84 million LTC.