Reasoning behind recent price spikes
As we are continuing to see decline in cryptocurrency markets Litecoin is showing more stability than other altcoins and faster recovery of the price. After on 10th June Charlie Lee (creator of Litecoin) announced that he is leaving Coinbase to work full-time on Litecoin. His foundation received a donation of 438 LTC which at that point was about $12 000. Within couple of days price of Litecoin experienced growth by 100% ($52 at peak). Which would double the value of donation and their investments in Litecoin. Even if it was mostly speculation initiated growth after the price correction Litecoin price found stabilization after losing just 20%. Which still in a monthly scale looks really good combined with increased market cap around $2.5 billion placing it convincingly into top 5.
BitGo working security solutions for Litecoin
BitGo is the world’s leading multi-signature technology service provider and recently they started supporting Litecoin. Before this BitGo was exclusively supporting Bitcoin. A lot of exchanges are working with BitGo so adding Litecoin support most certainly will help it to grow. Also recently Bitstamp enabled Litecoin trading. It was a long wait and came together with BitGo's multi-signature security solution for Litecoin.
Antpool mining empty blocks on Litecoin network
It's been known for quite some time that Antpool is mining empty blocks on Bitcoin network. Now they are doing the same on the Litecoin network for no appearant reason. And they are doing it more than everyone else combined. Mining empty blocks doesn't really have any purpose, there are no transactions in them. They can appear at any time, but mining them on purpose just doesn't make any sense. The only thing that it could accomplish is to drive up transaction fees in long-term which would benefit miners lightly. There has been rumors that banks are financing that but honestly I don't believe that. More like China again has their own secret agenda.
Ecosystem of Litecoin is evolving as we speak and future seems to be bright for now. As far as the price goes I don't believe it is going to drop under $40 and will continue with the uptrend.
