Litecoin hits all-time price and becomes the fourth most valuable cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization, surpassing Ethereum Classic, Dash and NEM
Brisk growth of Litecoin lately could be explained by the fact that founder Charlie Lee resigned his position of Director of Engineering at Coinbase and dived into Litecoin developing.
In late April, Lee began convinced Litecoin miners based in China to signal for Segregated Witness, the transaction malleability fix. On April 21, the Litecoin Global Roundtable Resolution 001 was announced, in which major mining pools including Bitmain (Antpool), BW.com, F2Pool and OKCoin expressed their support towards the activation of Segwit.
The Segwit’s activation marked a major milestone for both Litecoin and Bitcoin, as it demonstrated the possibility of activating Segwit to the Litecoin and Bitcoin communities.
The result came quickly – the SegWit activation led to an increase in the demand for Litecoin and a surge in development, as people who used to invest into Litecoin at the times, when it was considered to be the “silver” for the Bitcoin, returned to the beloved cryptocurrency again.
As the result, at the time when the article has been published, Litecoin capitalization makes around $2.706 billion and ranks among Top-4 most valuable cryptocurrency in the world, according to CoinMarketCap.
In addition, daily traded value exceeded $1 bln and surpassed such giants as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Currently, Litecoin price constitutes slightly more than $52, while the peak price overshot the all-time high today at 00:24 UTC and made $56.03.
Ethereum is far less stable than Bitcoin: it has never experienced a shakeup of such volumes. The capitalization slumped around 40% (of maximum of $40 bln) less than a month ago, and now equals $24,9 bln.
Bitcoin’s volatility stays within limits, so there seems to be nothing to worry about. Most likely, that new capitalization and traded value peaks are to be seen after the South Korea makes it legal means of exchange (in the absence of other force majeures).
Interesting, that despite the latest rumours about Amazon’s plans about acception of the Litecoin were squashed by its founder Charlie Lee, the interest in the currency continues to actively grow as well as its value.
Amazon may not be accepting Litecoin, but others are starting to – for example some local businesses in the US claim to accept the currency.
At the same time, China’s interest in the currency has always been higher than in the West: several of its largest exchanges, have already traded Litecoin alongside Bitcoin for years.
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