Litecoin Integrates SegWit And Lightning Network, Reaches 3-Year High - What's The Future Of The Silver Of Cryptocurrencies?
This past week has been the most exciting week for cryptocurrency this year - so far.
Almost all major cryptocurrencies were rising again and again, breaking records here and there!
Bitcoin broke through its all-time high of $1,242 from November 2013, and even continued to rise over $1,600. (What do you think - when will we break through the $2,000 mark?)
Ethereum has also created a new record when it surpassed the price of $100 earlier this morning.
The rise of Litecoin was especially interesting to me - it rose over 30% in the last few days and reached a 3-year high of over $25.
Litecoin has always been the "Silver" to Bitcoin's "Gold", so after stagnating below the $10 mark for years, it's amazing to finally see it rise back up again.
There are multiple possible reasons for this sudden upwards trend:
Coinbase, one of the largest exchange platforms in the world, has finally added support for Litecoin.
Coinbase started as a platform to exchange fiat money to Bitcoin, and then added support for Ethereum last summer.
The reason to choose Ethereum over Litecoin was that Ethereum's focus on smart contracts seemed more promising to Coinbase.
Interestingly, Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, is a director of engineering at Coinbase - and has been for the last 4 years.
So what excactly has changed that made Coinbase support Litecoin?
I'm sure most of you have heard of the struggle that Bitcoin is currently going through - since there are so many Bitcoin transactions now daily, the network takes too long to confirm them, so one of the following 2 solutions needs to be implemented:
- Bitcoin Unlimited: deleting the block size limit
- Segregated Witness - SegWit: increasing the block size slightly and transfering non-essential data off the blockchain.
The Bitcoin community still hasn't come to a conclusion yet, but Charlie Lee and the Litecoin community agreed to integrate SegWit into Litecoin.
This has spiked the interest in Litecoin and increased its trading volume, and therefore Coinbase decided to finally add them to their exchange service as 3rd cryptocurrency.
And SegWit actually comes with more benefits as well:
- SegWit eliminates the risk of a third party altering a transaction before it's been confirmed
- SegWit enables "Lightning Networks" - instant Litecoin payments, something that has never been possible for any major cryptocurrency.
"At Coinbase, our mission is to create an open financial system for the world. We're paving our path to that goal by creating the most trusted and easiest way to buy [and] sell digital currency. This [integration] is part of our shift to supporting more types of digital assets over the coming year."-Coinbase statement
The Future of Litecoin?
Charlie Lee has told TechCrunch that Litecoin could be a "testing ground for future Bitcoin features".
If SegWit and Lightning Networks could be implemented successfully, it could be a positive example for the Bitcoin community and eventually help with their decision.
What do you think about the future of Litecoin? Will it be able to surpass its all-time high of $50 anytime soon?
Let me know in the comments!
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like Charlie said it can be a dangerous testing ground. But it can also be used to predict what is coming to bitcoin and something good in LTC means good for the overall crypto space.
Good point. I think we should wait and see how the community responds to the changes in the ltc network changes, and then they can make a better decision for bitcoin.
So many coins, so little capital for me to exploit it.
Yes you'd need some capital if you really wanted to make the MOST out of this situation!
But still, you can profit with a small trading volume too.
Interesting blog. Nice to see I'm not the only one who thinks like this. The biggest group of uneducated investors in mankind get's a shot to determine the price of a crypto. It's an interesting world we live in. I found this great website: https://www.coincheckup.com I don't know any other site that gives such good inisghts in the team, the product, advisors, community, the business and the business model, etc. For example: https://www.coincheckup.com/coins/Litecoin#analysis To see the: Litecoin Report.
Check the latest price predictions ;)
https://beincrypto.com/litecoin-ltc-price-prediction-and-forecast-price-still-lite-in-december-17-12-2018/