Litecoin’s price gained nearly 30 percentage points on Friday, surpassing the $90 and reaching a market capitalization of $4.816 million, according to coinmarketcap.com. The number five cryptocurrency led the top 10 cryptos except for 10th ranking Ethereum Classic, which jumped 32.34 points.
Source: Coinmarketcap.com
The $91.32 price nearly doubles the $47.20 price from three weeks ago, not to mention the more than 200% gain over where the price stood in late March.
Lee’s Announcement Sparks Rally
The new advance seems to have been sparked by Litecoin developer Charlie Lee’s announcement that he had Lightning’s LND and a Lightning-enabled wallet installed and working on the mainnet. Lee posted a screenshot of a Lightning network-enabled Zap wallet.
Lee had previously stated that he was testing Lightning on the Litecoin mainnet, but today’s tweet confirms that the system is functioning correctly.
In the past week, Litecoin has leaped over both the $60 and $70 thresholds. The rally has been fueled by strong volume on Asian cryptocurrency exchanges.
SegWit Fuels Continuing Gains
Litecoin surpassed the $50 mark for the first time in August due to its compatibility with bitcoin as a result of its Segregated Witness (SegWit) activation and its hedge-like characteristics to Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Bitcoin analyst and investor Tuur Demeester recently described Litecoin as a bitcoin hedge because of its SegWit-enabled network and transactions. He said that the sell-off of BCH was likely to cause Litecoin price to surge.
The activation of SegWit on both the Litecoin and bitcoin networks has likely played a role in Litecoin’s surge. The dual activations will enable cross-network transaction swaps between the two cryptocurrencies. Such swaps are expected to facilitate innovations within the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Litecoin’s price has been rising steadily since March when it began climbing from the $4.00 range. The climb from March marked the first recovery since late 2013, when Litecoin rose from low single digits to over $50 in November, 2013, then tumbled through 2014 to $1.29 on Jan. 1, 2015.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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