Litecoin Price Surges, Market Cap up 36% in a Week
Litecoin price has jumped 8% in the last 24 hours, altogether jumping over 35% in the space of a week.
The only cryptos to surpass Litecoin were number 29th placed PIVX, which has $125.397 in market capitalization, which jumped 39.82 points; and a handful of others with far less market capitalization.
Among the cryptos with more than a billion in market capitalization, sixth ranking NEM also delivered an impressive gain at 22.76 points, while seventh place Dash jumped 17.25 points and Ethereum increased by 16.88 points.
Litecoin Rides The Crypto Surge
Litecoin has been riding bitcoin and Ethereum’s post-March surge, jumping from $3.85 on March 13 to $51.64 on July 4, at which point it well outdistanced its prior record $33.72 on Dec. 1, 2013.
The price had fallen as low as $1.33 in January of 2015 before climbing to $7.76 in July of that year before tumbling steadily until June 26, 2016, when it reached $4.00.
Litecoin received a boost last month when BitGo, the leading multi-signature technology-based service provider that works with some of the largest bitcoin exchanges and trading platforms, began to support Litecoin and provide security services for the Litecoin platforms.
The BitGo boost came on the heels of Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, announcing plans to resign from his position as Coinbase director of engineering to solely focus on the development and innovation of Litecoin. Lee noted that the decision of the BitGo development team to implement Litecoin and provide multi-signature security services for Litecoin-based platforms and service providers is a major step for the Litecoin community and industry.
Also read: Litecoin sees increased development amidst surging price rally
SegWit Boosts Litecoin
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 activation of Segwit marked a major milestone for both Litecoin and bitcoin, as it demonstrated the possibility of activating Segwit to the Litecoin and bitcoin communities.
The SegWit activation led to an increase in the demand for Litecoin and a surge in development. Within three months of the SegWit activation, Litecoin’s market cap increased from $200 million to a staggering $2.5 billion, recording a 1,150 three-month increase. In that short period of time, Litecoin became the fourth most valuable cryptocurrency in the world by market cap, surpassing Ethereum Classic, Dash and NEM.
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