Ilir Gashi, community manager at Litecoin Foundation, published an interesting recap of Litecoin-related events which transpired throughout the year of 2018. In a year that hit the cryptocurrency markets pretty hard, Litecoin suffered pretty significantly as well. Still, Gashi remains adamant that Litecoin was simply a victim of low market sentiment and even suggested that the media and their “misinformed coverage” had their hand in Litecoin underperforming in price terms.
2018 has been “important” for Litecoin in terms of adoption as the number of merchant processors, merchants and businesses adopting Litecoin payments grew significantly. Litecoin’s network infrastructure saw exponential growth as well, as the currency currently dominates Scrypt mining segment with over 95% of the total share.
Pointing out that Litecoin remains one of the safest, heavily traded, cryptocurrencies on the market, Gashi lists out several highlights that marked the year of 2018 for the coin. Coinbase Commerce support, Lightning Network Beta, plans for Smart Contract integration, $99M in Litecoin transacted costing only $0.40 in fees, Wirex/Abra/NASDAQ announcing Litecoin support, Litecoin Foundation acquiring 9.9% stake in a German WEG Bank, Bittrex announcing Litecoin USD pairs, Litecoin Summit 2018, HTC Exodus cooperation, The Flappening and Litecoin Foundation sponsoring UFC 232 were just some of the highest points this cryptocurrency experienced during the last year.
Gashi reiterated that focus for 2019 remains increased adoption, with aim to further grow the Lightning Network on Litecoin while incorporating Atomic Swaps and privacy features into the currency. Remittance, lending and microfinance options will be discussed with the WEG Bank and merchant network will be spread out globally into sectors including sports, media, fashion and entertainment.
LTC and its bleak future
Litecoin has been in existence since 2011. The market was swept with new altcoins (shitcoins?) in the last two years which saw Litecoin drop behind in media coverage and buyer’s attention.
Once second largest cryptocurrency, Litecoin got pushed down by new projects one by one to its current 7th position in the rankings of crypto coins by their respective market caps.
The most important thing for Litecoin in 2019 is to stay clear of being classified as just another shitcoin. Essentially, staying relevant is the number one goal for Charlie Lee and team behind LTC.
Ever since Lee sold his coins around price peak, he lost some credibility among crypto enthusiasts and, even though Charlie vehemently denies it, that event did considerable damage to Litecoin’s reputation. The popular motto of crypto “skin in the game” was violated by this sale and many holders followed suit as they don’t want to hold coins of a project whose founder is perceived to have no faith in its success.
With Coinbase adding more altcoins with each passing month, LTC’s main price driver is diminished as the buyer’s attention is diluted with shiny new coins he can buy (ETC, BAT, ZRX etc).
Other coins with similar use cases are are bringing at least something unique to the table: NANO is fastest and fee-less, XMR, ZEC, DASH are fungible and private, XRP and XLM are fast and have strong companies behind them, DCR has innovative governance model etc.
Litecoin will be happy to be alive at the end of 2019.
Not much is happening on LTC blockchain
It is the standard state of Litecoin to sit and wait for bitcoin developers to push new upgrades so LTC can port them to their blockchain. I am still perplexed as to what is the point of such project. Additionally, LTC shows almost no activity on its chain as expressed through valuable on-chain metrics like number of on-chain transactions, active addresses, block size, NVT ratio etc. As we wrote earlier this week, voices about the LTC senseless existence are getting louder, noting the same thing I mentioned above.
“A good time to remind you all that $LTC is completely worthless. On-chain transactions are a joke. Last 5 blocks are all smaller than 30kb, network is totally empty. It’s not used for payments, it’s not used for anything.”
This was a reaction to the news that Coinbase moved around $5 billion in value of crypto tokens as a part of their system upgrade. As Frank Chaparo of The Block reported,
“The $5 billion number represents 5% of all bitcoin, 8% of the total supply of ether, and 25% of all litecoin.”
Do you know what is Litecoin Cash all about?
This news bamboozled Dogecoin founder and renown crypto commentator Jackson Palmer as he questioned if people leaving their private keys on centralized exchanges defeats the foundational principle of cryptocurrencies.
pretty harsh assessment of LTC. I hope you are in the minority