Buy LitecoinLTC to BTC
Litecoin out of your wallet, Bitcoin back at an address you control. The pair is straightforward — the timing is the part worth understanding.
Live feed, so the number moves. What lands depends on the fee on each chain and the spread built into the quote.
Why the second half drags
Two chains, two very different clocks
Litecoin targets a block every 2.5 minutes. Bitcoin targets one every ten. That single difference explains almost everything about how an LTC to BTC swap feels while you're waiting for it.
Your deposit confirms quickly. Litecoin blocks arrive four times as often, so the first leg is usually done before you've finished checking the order page. Then the payout goes out on Bitcoin, and it waits for a block like everything else on that chain.
So if a swap in this direction feels slow, it's almost never the deposit. It's the Bitcoin side doing exactly what Bitcoin does.
What address to give
Which Bitcoin address format to use
Bitcoin has several address formats in circulation and your wallet picks one for you. In current software the default is a bech32 address starting with bc1q, and that's the everyday choice for receiving a swap payout.
You'll also run into bc1p addresses, which are Taproot, and older ones starting with 1 or 3. All of them receive coins. The practical rule is simple: take the address your wallet shows on its own receive screen and don't try to convert between formats by hand.
Bech32 addresses are written in lowercase and aren't case-sensitive, so a wallet that displays one in capitals isn't showing you a different address. Copy and paste regardless — reading a long string back character by character is how mistakes get in.
One thing that has no workaround: send Litecoin to a Bitcoin address, or the reverse, and the coins are gone. Different chains, no recovery, no support desk anywhere that can undo it.
The cost side
What the Bitcoin fee depends on
Bitcoin fees are quoted in satoshis per virtual byte — sat/vB — and they move with how busy the mempool is. When lots of people are trying to get into the next block, the price of a spot in it goes up. When it's quiet, it drops.
That fee comes out of the payout side of your swap, and it's set by the network rather than by the service handling the trade. The other two pieces are the Litecoin network fee on the way in and the spread inside the quoted rate. No percentages here, because a real number would be out of date by the time you read it.
Replace-by-fee is worth knowing about for your own sends: it lets you resend a transaction that hasn't confirmed yet with a higher fee attached. That applies to the Litecoin deposit you control, not to the payout leg someone else broadcasts.
Questions
About this pair
How long does an LTC to BTC swap take?
The Litecoin deposit confirms on 2.5-minute blocks, so that part is quick. The Bitcoin payout then waits for a block on a chain that targets ten minutes, and how many confirmations get waited for varies by service.
Which BTC address should I give for the payout?
The one your wallet shows on its receive screen. On current software that's usually a bc1q bech32 address. Taproot addresses starting with bc1p and older 1 or 3 addresses receive coins too.
Why is the Bitcoin fee different every time?
It's priced in sat/vB and it tracks demand for block space. A busy mempool pushes it up, a quiet one lets it fall. Nothing about the swap itself changes that figure — the network sets it.
Can I send my deposit from an MWEB address?
Almost certainly not. Litecoin's confidential layer uses ltcmweb1 addresses and most services refuse deposits from them. Move the coins onto a normal Litecoin address first.
Can I run the pair the other way, BTC to LTC?
Yes. Use the reverse button between the two fields, or start from the main page where BTC to LTC is the default pair.
Rather go the other way?
The main page covers buying LTC with whatever you're already holding, including the wallet formats worth avoiding.