An interesting announcement was made by the Bitstamp exchange yesterday. The company acknowledged they will integrate support for Litecoin and Ethereum in June of 2017. That is a major step in the right direction for both currencies. Bitstamp will provide fiat currency and Bitcoin trading pairs for both currencies. It will be interesting to see how this introduction will affect both the LTC and ETH value.
Bitstamp Looks To Expand Its Offerings
It is always good to see cryptocurrency exchanges focus on other currencies as well. For the longest time, Bitstamp has traded Bitcoin against fiat currencies. Not too long ago, the company added support for XRP as well, although it does not appear that particular market is overly popular right now. In June of 2017, the company will add both Litecoin and Ethereum support as well, which is quite significant.
Over the past few months, both Litecoin and Ethereum have received a lot of attention. Litecoin is the first major cryptocurrency to activate SegWit. Although many people still see this as a testbed for Bitcoin, it is still possible Segregated Witness may never be activated on the Bitcoin network. Assuming that is the case, Litecoin is in a prime position to bring some much-needed competition to Bitcoin. Some projects are already switching from Bitcoin to Litecoin because of this scaling solution.
The addition of Ethereum is quite significant for Bitstamp as well. Ethereum briefly surpassed the US$200 mark yesterday for the very first time. Although the currency has dropped a fair of value ever since, it goes to show demand for ETH is still on the rise. Bitstamp wants to get in on this action by adding ETH trading pairs to its platform. Both currencies should be added in the next few weeks, although no specific dates have been announced yet.
It will be interesting to see how these additions work out. Both Litecoin and Ethereum are traded across many different platforms already. |The addition of Bitstamp may not do all that much for the price. Then again, more liquidity across multiple exchanges is never a bad thing. Things are looking good for both alternative cryptocurrencies, that much is certain.