Today we wake up to LTE rising up from the ashes buried from January to Feb 9ish.
But why is it rising up? Many rumors are going around in regards to a LTE Cash and LTE Payment (Litepay).
Litecoin prices surged by more than 30% Wednesday as the hype around the introduction of Litepay gained momentum.
Litepay is a new payment system for Litecoin, which will allow businesses to accept Litecoin payments, and offer users the ability to “spend dollars anywhere debit cards are accepted, or withdraw cash from any compatible ATM,” according to its website. The announcement will bring the fifth biggest cryptocurrency closer to mainstream use.
The price of Litecoin reached an intraday high of $216 Wednesday, representing a 35% rally. The move has dragged other cryptocurrencies higher with the No.1 digital currency bitcoin BTCUSD, +7.87% trading above $9,200.
“In the last 24 hours or so we’ve seen large buying volumes relative to the last few weeks following some positive recent news including Litepay announcing a 2/26 launch,” aid Alex Sunnarborg, founding partner of Tetras Capital.
Sunnarborg said that the wider crypto positive news, which includes work on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network has helped the rally in Litecoin prices.
In addition to the Litepay news, Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +0.29% announced it would embrace bitcoin and Ethereum to shore up identity and security issues.
“After examining decentralized storage systems, consensus protocols, blockchains, and a variety of emerging standards we believe blockchain technology and protocols are well suited for enabling decentralized IDs,” Microsoft said in its press release.
Wednesday’s rally in Litecoin has taken its total market cap to $11.8 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.com.
When litecoin hits block 1371111 — expected to happen at around 5 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 18 — litecoin cash will split from the litecoin blockchain, and give every litecoin holder 10 new coins for every one litecoin they own, the litecoin cash foundation announced Tuesday.
The new currency is not connected to the original litecoin in anyway. Its creator, Charlie Lee, has warned that any fork could likely be a scam, merely using the litecoin name as marketing.