Litecoin hits a new all-time high of $255 surging by over 50% in past 34 hours, having gained in total 5500% in the last one year.
Bitcoin started on a pretty good note this week as the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s (CBOE) Bitcoin futures contracts went live on Sunday evening December 10. A massive investor participation flooded Bitcoin market within the first 24 hours once the futures contract launched. However, it is not just Bitcoin that is ruling the crypto charts this week.
Litecoin (LTC) has proved the underdog and is currently dominating crypto charts. In the past 24 hours, the price of Litecoin has surged over 45% hitting a new all-time high of $255.40, according to CoinMarketCap. The 24-hour trading volume for Litecoin has crossed $4.68 billion while the market cap has surpassed $13 billion. Currently the cryptocurrency is trading at $245.51.
An interesting fact is that if we closely look at the stats since the beginning of 2017, when Litecoin traded at a mere price of $4.3, the token has appreciated investors’ money almost twice as much as bitcoin has done. If to calculate the returns as on the existing date, it turns out that during the afore-mentioned period Litecoin has gained more than 5500 percent against Bitcoin’s 1800 percent.
Moreover, given greater investor participation, one of the biggest BTC-connected problems that exchanges are now facing is very slow transaction speeds and higher cost of conversion to other cryptocurrencies. Litecoin, in its turn, offers a competitive advantage in this sphere and better stability over Bitcoin.
On Monday morning, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee appeared on CNBC talking about the connection between the cryptocurrency and the technology that supports it. He highlighted the fact that one of the major challenges the cryptocurrency faces is the network support to survive in the long term. Charlie said that in the future we will have only those cryptocurrencies that offer good network services.
While further jibing at fiat currencies, Charlie candidly said that given the potential of cryptocurrencies being used in day-to-day transactions, they can essentially replace U.S. Dollar over some period of time. And Litecoin can have an early lead over Bitcoin, in being used as a daily currency, because of the advantages like faster transaction, lower transaction fees, and much more stability.
Few analysts have even started supporting Litecoin over Bitcoin: Co-founder and CEO of digital currency platform CryptoCompare believes that in the long term Litecoin has an upper edge over Bitcoin with a greater upside potential and lower downside risk.
Similarly, a senior market analyst for eToro, Mati Greenspan said:
“Litecoin is more scalable by nature and with bitcoins mempool currently flooded with unconfirmed transactions Litecoin is looking much better than BTC as a medium of exchange.”
With the latest surge in its price, Litecoin becomes the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap moving ahead in the table beating other altcoins like IOTA, Ripple and Dash.
As cryptocurrencies grow to be more and more popular, it is interesting to see, which of them are here to stay for the long term being able to strike utility needs of an average user.
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