With the recent activation of Segwit, Litecoin has seen a huge jump in price up to near all time highs. With the huge jump happening in the last month or so, I was hesitant to buy some coins as I feared I had missed my opportunity for growth. What changed my mind however was when I clicked on the chart for the entire history of the coin:
What changed my mind was that at the end of 2013 the coin had reached an all time high of over $50 USD, before crashing dramatically for 3 years. In following a lot of alt coins, this pattern in charts often signals that the coin is going to rise fro here. The original crash often happens soon after creation, followed by a flat period and finally growth!
Often dubbed as ‘silver to bitcoin’s gold’, Litecoin is broadly built on a structure similar to Bitcoin's. It has a faster block generation rate and hence offers a faster transaction confirmation. The Litecoin network is faster than BTC and four times the amount of coins will be released over time. There is continued development of the coin and to me it feels as if it is Litecoin's time to rise back to the top of the charts. The recent interest in crypto currency will draw new investor money into the market and Litecoin has timed the implementation of Segwit perfectly.
Segwit (investopedia)
The main reason behind the recent rally has been the rising support towards adopting Segregated Witness, or simply SegWit. Litecoin like Bitcoin has a block capacity of one megabyte (MB) that limits the transactions per block. As the network grows, this tends to slow down the confirmation of transactions. SegWit is thus a ‘scaling’ mechanism originally developed for bitcoin. The adoption of SegWit requires a network consensus which has hindered its upgrade in case of bitcoin.
With the numerous cryptocurrencies I'm now hodling, I wanted a safe and secure online wallet that I could store my coins and leave for a few years. Enter Litevault wallet. Created by SomeGuy123, a contributor to the Litecoin project, the wallet is safe enough for my purpose. I created a wallet and I've stored my coins. Let's hope over the years Litecoin continues its growth now that Segwit and newer features are planned for it!