It seems Bitcoin is not the only Cryptocurrency that’s been growing lately as Litecoin, another digital currency has just crossed the $300 mark. With an impressive growth rate of roughly 90 percent in just the last 24 hours, Litecoin has now become the fourth largest cryptocurrency in the world.
Litecoin has seen extraordinary growth in not just the last 24 hours but throughout 2017. The cryptocurrency’s value has increased by a whopping 5800 percent this year. You can buy Litecoin through Coinbase.com
Litecoin’s market cap is currently $18.3 billion, surpassing IOTA. Its market cap increased by $6 billion in just the last 24 hours! It’s amazing to think that Litecoin’s current worth is now more than what the entire cryptocurrency market was worth a year ago.
Although Litecoin hasn’t announced any updates of any sort, demand for Litecoin suddenly increased within the last week which was reflected in the spike in its trading volumes. However, the question is why the sudden interest in Litecoin?
There are many explanations for increasing interest in Litecoin. Charlie Hayter, a founder of crypto compare, told CNBC that when Bitcoin goes down, that is the time when Litecoin usually gets a boost.
However, Bitcoin has been going up for the past few months; another possible explanation is the interest of Asian investors in Litecoin diversifying portfolios is one of the main objectives of investors. As Bitcoin grows and increases the wealth of investors, these investors will likely want to diversify by investing in other cryptocurrencies as well.
A general explanation is that all cryptocurrencies seem to have benefitted from Bitcoin’s explosive growth in 2017. As Bitcoin broke headlines, it attracted a lot of attention towards the cryptocurrency market which in turn helped the entire market.
This explanation sounds much more acceptable as all other cryptocurrencies have seen some form of growth this year along with the growth of Bitcoin. Many also believe this to be a bubble which will eventually lead to all the cryptocurrencies suffering later.
Litecoin creator and former Coinbase executive Charlie Lee hold a similar view with regards to Litecoin’s current situation. Lee warns investors not to get too excited by Litecoin’s sudden growth as there could be a major reduction or “correction” in its value as Lee put it.
“Sorry to spoil the party, but I need to reign in the excitement a bit… Buying LTC is extremely risky. I expect us to have a multi-year bear market like the one we just had where LTC dropped 90% in value ($48 to $4). So if you can’t handle LTC dropping to $20, don’t buy,” said Lee on Twitter.
He also went on to state in a follow up to his previous twitter post that every bull run he’s seen in the cryptocurrency market is usually followed by a bear cycle. Therefore, he advises people to invest responsibly as anything could happen in the long run and this recent surge could just be a short-term effect.
This could hold true even more for Litecoin as the trading of this cryptocurrency may not be monitored by any authority in some parts of the world.
Considering what took place in recent events, it’s likely to believe that Litecoin trading is not centralized in South Korea. Over $1 billion worth of Litecoin trades were processed by GDAX in just the last 24 hours. That is almost half the amount of the daily trading volume of GDAX that’s allocated to Litecoin.
However, Litecoin offers a “drama free” community, lower fees, faster confirmation and transaction times and a much larger supply of coins than Bitcoin. Therefore, it is likely that investors see a potential future in a comparatively more stable cryptocurrency environment of Litecoin.