2022 was a crazy year for bitcoin and cryptocurrency. With all the talk regarding the fall of bitcoin’s price and value, it became easy to forget about some of the more obscure coins. Now, many of those assets are coming back into the fray, including Litecoin, which many analysts think is about to make a major comeback and become one of the biggest, most talked about assets of the new year.
Litecoin Is Back, Baby!
One of the reasons Litecoin is returning to everyone’s attention at this time is because it appears to be one of the few digital currencies that hasn’t been affected by the fall of crypto exchange FTX. In fact, not long after the platform crashed and burned, the mysterious altcoin rose by more than 35 percent and hit a peak of about $81. This is huge considering most other altcoins and bitcoin itself were falling into the doldrums.
Prashant Kumar – the founder and CEO of We Trade, a cryptocurrency platform – said in a recent interview:
LTC is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open-source platform that has been created from the BTC blockchain. While it may have similarities with BTC, LTC has a different algorithm and maximum supply. The altcoin has seen some volatility in 2022 and would hope for [a] breakthrough in pricing this year.
In addition, it appears Litecoin is being adopted like crazy by merchants far more than they are even adopting bitcoin. NerdWallet shows that more than 42 million Litecoin-based transactions occurred in 2021 alone as it is labeled a stronger medium of exchange when compared to its daddy BTC.
Amanjot Malhotra – the head of the Indian crypto exchange Bitay – said in a statement:
In terms of importance in [the] cryptocurrency industry, I believe LTC has played a role in helping to popularize the use of cryptocurrency and has served as a testbed for new features that have later been implemented in other cryptocurrencies. For example, LTC was the first cryptocurrency to implement Segregated Witness (Seg Wit), which is a protocol that improves the scalability and security of the blockchain.
Several other exchanges – including big names like Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance – have also permitted Litecoin transactions and trades since the beginning. This has led to a product called Liteverse, which is believed to be the first Litecoin centered non-fungible token (NFT) on the market.
Will More Businesses Seek to Use the Coin?
Sathvik Vishwanath – co-founder and CEO of crypto exchange Uno Coin – said:
Global sectors that could potentially benefit from LTC include e-commerce, cross-border payments, and [the] financial industry. LTC could benefit the decentralized finance (defi) landscape by providing an alternative to Ethereum, which is currently the dominant platform for defi applications.
At the time of writing, it’s believed that more businesses are going to demand Litecoin usage in 2023.
