Litecoin goes $70 as Crypto Market Tops $175 Billion

The digital asset once dubbed "the silver to bitcoin's gold" passed $78 to achieve a new all-time high at 06:54 UTC this morning, according to CoinMarketCap data. Standing at $75.57 at press time, litecoin has increased by 17.28 percent over the past 24 hours and an astonishing 49.37 percent over the last week.

Long in the doldrums, litecoin has seen a resurgence since its community moved to activate Segregated Witness (SegWit) on its network early in May – a scaling solution that also opens the door to new features such as smart contracts going forward.

Once again, South Korean exchange Bithumb has seen the majority of the trading, hosting 22 percent of the litecoin volume in the last 24 hours. Chinese exchanges OKCoin and Huobi are close behind, with 18 and 14 percent, respectively.