First Of All
The market has been in decline the past 5 days, and after the very poor showing of the past 24 hours, many commentators1 have begun to speculate that this is the start of the correction.
Another Explanation
Now there may be another theory. Before the sharp decline in the price of BTC from $174002 to $145002, two events shook the market.
First, there was the unexpected addition of Bitcoin Cash to CoinBase, which stopped BTC in its tracks and drove BCH through the ceiling to over $4000 on Bittrex. The price was even higher on GDAX, with trading briefly above $9000 per share.
Then, news broke that Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin, had sold his entire stake in his own creation at around $300, near LTC's all-time high. Though he stated his reasons for doing so, Lee's action was seen by many as a Crypto-Titan jumping ship in anticipation of sharp price declines.
Rumors
Around 10 hours before the time of this article's writing, rumors began to circulate that Facebook was planning to incorporate LTC-based payment support into its messenger service. This cast Lee's selloff in a new light; perhaps he was contractually bound to sell in order to avoid any conflicts of interest. In the hours since, Litecoin's price has risen from a trough of $2732 to current trading prices just above $3002
The volume of the rumors on has risen in the hours since with much rehashing of the same information happening on Twitter, but neither Lee nor Facebook have come forward to confirm or deny. While one can understand an unwillingness on both of their parts to confirm such news earlier than planned, it's hard to see why they would fail to deny the rumors if they weren't true.
This is, of course, as yet, nothing but speculation.
Possible Fallout
Needless to say, if the it turns out to be true, LTC will be flying direct to the moon. While large corporations have announced cryptocurrency partnerships/endorsements in the past —such as KIK's upcoming ICO with Stellar, previously Ripple—, no company with anywhere near Facebook's size or visibility has done so.
Staying Informed
When news breaks, whether it be confirmation or denial, it will do so in one (if denial) or all (if confirmation) of the following places:
- Charlie Lee's Twitter
- Facebook's Twitter (ironic?)
- Litecoin's Twitter
- CoinDesk
- CryptoCoinNews
- CoinTelegraph
- Your crypto-news source of choice
- Your traditional news source of choice
Notes — Links — Jargon
1 - CoinDesk | BitcoinMagazine | CryptoCoinNews | Fortune | Forbes | Investopedia | CNBC
2 - prices quoted as seen on Bittrex
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Disclaimer: Nothing read herein is to be taken as investment advice. Always do your own research before investing.
Disclosure: I own LTC