Litecoin locks in and activates SegWit in mid-May, looking to hit $25

After many setbacks, it has now been confirmed that the Litecoin network will activate the SegWit protocol in mid-May.

Litecoin founder Charlie Lee confirmed on Twitter that SegWit will be locked and activated at the end of Phase 7, and later clarified the date to May. Although many people in the process believed that the activation point would be reached in Phase 6, it is said that activation will not occur until miners upgrade and protect their network nodes during the lock-in period.

Shortly before this clarification on Litecoin SegWit’s progress, a roundtable meeting of Litecoin mining stakeholders was held to discuss how to dispel industry misunderstandings and promote industry consensus. The participants included operators of Chinese mining groups.

Lee also confirmed that he is working on getting Litecoin listed on Coinbase’s exchange.

There was a poll on Lee’s Twitter page for followers, asking which one they thought would come first, the activation of SegWit or the listing of Litecoin on Coinbase, and two-thirds of the followers thought that Coinbase would list Litecoin first. Both events can reflect the price of the currency.

Litecoin Price Outlook

Its founder has hinted that Litecoin could reach $14 per unit after Segregated Witness is activated. However, considering the dramatic change in the stance of large mining pools on SegWit, Litecoin has already reached $14 per unit, and even $16 on some exchanges, while SegWit activation is not yet locked. It can be inferred that if Segregated Witness is properly activated, it will push Litecoin prices to between $18 and $25. If Litecoin is also listed on Coinbase, then Litecoin will open up markets in more than 30 countries and its price will reach $30.

In a recent speech at Coinbase, Lee stressed that Litecoin is not intended to compete with Bitcoin, but to be used for cheaper transactions, and that technologies like the Lightning Network will interconnect the two currencies.

There are also some suggestions that Litecoin’s successful deployment of Segregated Witness activation could also be a boost for Bitcoin, as the Bitcoin SegWit activation process has been stagnant for quite some time.