Litecoin Takes an End of Year ‘Slap in The Face’

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Litecoin does not seem to be performing very well at all during these last two weeks of December 2017. A recent price decline saw the cryptocurrency have its value depreciation extended to 20%.

Litecoin’s value as at Thursday December 28 had by fallen by about 10% again, leaving it trading at $228. This extends Litecoin’s value decline run to 20% in five trading days. This is a corresponding $60 decline; not so bad considering bitcoin has lost almost $5,000 in these same gloomy times in the cryptocurrency market.

The figures from CoinMarketCap show that Litecoin’s current market cap is at 13 billion US dollars. They also indicated that during the course of Thursday almost 2 billion dollars’ worth of Litecoin had exchanged ownership and that majority of these transactions took place in Asia, particularly OKEX exchange based in Hong Kong, China. Other exchanges that recorded transacted these changes of hands were Coinbase, who processed about 9%, and Bitfinex who processed a little about 3% of this $2 billion.

This recent decline seems to be confirming most speculations made by market analysts that bitcoin’s performance greatly influenced the performance of Litecoin too. Litecoin which has been dubbed “the silver of bitcoin’s gold” still seems to be living in the shadow of bitcoin as much as Leto’s Joker lives in Ledger’s shadow. Both cryptocurrencies “often trade in the same direction”, thus, the greater currencies performance usually determines just how well the lesser also performs.

Abandon Ship or Not, Litecoin’s Contiguous Future

Litecoin has seen both good and bad days. A couple of weeks ago the market cap of the cryptocurrency surpassed $20 billion, today its sits at $13 billion. Despite it been one of the very first altcoins, its popularity only really grew somewhere at the beginning of this year. Its creator, Charlie Lee, claims that 2018 is going to be a very promising year for altcoins as their developers look into various ways to better various aspects of cryptocurrency transactions. Expected updates like Dash’s “Evolution” software update which are scheduled for 2018 are believed to be introducing a much more sophisticated system for cryptocurrency transactions to make them easier to use and bring in more investors.

Litecoin’s demand is still growing despite this decline in value. mBit Casino recently announced the introduction of Litecoin into their payment systems. After a while of bitcoin’s monopoly as the gambling site’s betting currency, they have decided to include altcoins to help ease the traffic on the cryptocurrency’s blockchain network. This is what their spokesperson Philip Aaker had to say about the new development involving Litecoin

“This transition has been an important one. We noticed exceptional Bitcoin transaction fees in recent weeks as the blockchain got clogged with unconfirmed transactions. By adding support for cryptocurrencies like LTC, DOGE and BCH, our players will be able to spend much less on transaction fees.”