Why can't I send my Litecoin to an address starting with 3?

3 different types of Litecoin addresses exist:

• p2pkh L-prefix address (Le6HehWCEKK1n65Pa8kJNsmUxpLXLBp51B)

• old p2sh deprecated 3-prefix address (3Nsi4BpeZtsLQvkn8p6PZfHFPoUxKbJ1YY)
• new p2sh M-prefix address (MV5rN5EcX1imDS2gEh5jPJXeiW5QN8YrK3)

If a service is asking you to send Litecoin to an address that starts with 3 then a conversion to a Litecoin address that starts with M will be necessary.

We therefore invite you to use the following link to convert the 3-prefix address to a M-prefix address:
https://litecoin-project.github.io/p2sh-convert/

The source code for the converter can be found here:
https://github.com/litecoin-project/p2sh-convert

As previously stated, all legacy Litecoin addresses start with L while at the beginning all addresses of Pay to Script Hash (P2SH) type started with 3. This created confusion with users as there is no way to distinguish if these addresses were BTC addresses or LTC addresses. In order to avoid BTC transactions to LTC wallets (and vice versa), LTC has decided to change the prefix of its P2SH in M.

Some services have not yet passed to the new type of address and still use LTC addresses starting with 3. This issue can be bypassed using the conversion tool released by the Litecoin organization.

As always, after a successful conversion from a 3-prefix address to a M-prefix address, we suggest you first send a small LTC quantity to the new address to make sure everything worked out fine.