Litecoin (LTC) became the world’s 4th most valuable cryptocurrency on Friday evening after large speculative inflows from China and Korea propelled Litecoin’s market capitalization above $2 the billion mark.
Over the past 24h, a combined total of $300 million (40% of global LTC volume) flowed through OKCoin and Huobi’s LTC/CNY trading pairs. While on Korea’s most popular exchange, Bithumb, buyers and sellers swapped approximately $97 million worth of Litecoin over the past 24h (12.64% of global daily volume).
And American and European investors also joined the Litecoin frenzy. On America’s most popular cryptocurrency exchange, Poloniex, a sudden surge of speculative capital drove Litecoin’s exchange rate against Bitcoin to a 30-day high of 0.01953.
At press time, data from CoinMarketCap indicates that 10.62% ($82.3 million) of global Litecoin turnover took place on Poloniex’s LTC/BTC pair.
Although LTC/BTC exchange rate hoovered mostly around 0.011 during the first two weeks of June, more recent developments have re-focused investors’ attention back on Litecoin. Last Friday, Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin and director of engineering at Coinbase, announced he was leaving Coinbase to continue working on the Litecoin network.
Additionally, Luxembourg-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp said yesterday on Twitter that Litecoin-based trading pairs will be added next Monday.
However, today’s unexpected announcement by Bitmain, the largest manufacturer of specialized digital currency mining equipment, placed Litecoin on the ‘radars’ of millions of investors and speculators