Litecoin soared 200% in a month! 3 minutes to tell you why spicy snacks are rising!

Litecoin, nicknamed "spicy noodles", has been very popular recently! The price of the coin has been rising from 26 yuan in the past ten thousand years, and has exceeded the 80 yuan mark before the time of writing. Of course, Litecoin also rose to a high price of 380 yuan in November 2013, and then fell all the way, consolidating below 30 yuan for three years, until this market rekindled everyone's attention.

Litecoin's surge in prices rekindles market attention Image source: Golden Finance

According to the market information of Huobi.com, a safe and reliable digital currency trading platform

This is how the price of spicy strips has risen step by step

☟

On March 26, Litecoin opened at 27.02 yuan

On March 30, Litecoin’s highest price was 39.9 yuan

On April 4, Litecoin’s highest price was 59.85 yuan

On April 6, Litecoin’s highest price was 65 yuan

As of 18:20 on April 24, the highest price of Litecoin was 81.2 yuan

In less than a month, the increase was as high as

200%!

The spicy strips have hit a new high in the past three years.

Huobi Litecoin monthly chart

So, what is so special about this bag of spicy noodles? Why is there a saying in the cryptocurrency circle that "Bitcoin is gold, Litecoin is silver"? And why did the activation of Segregated Witness on Litecoin cause a sharp rise in the price of Litecoin? Let's follow Huobi's editor to decipher it!

What is Litecoin?

What is Litecoin? Image source: Golden Finance

Litecoin is abbreviated as LTC, and its English name is LiteCoin. It is nicknamed "Latiao" and is called Bitcoin's cousin by the public. Lite means lightweight, and the meaning behind Litecoin is that it is a lighter digital currency than Bitcoin.

Litecoin was created in November 2011 by Charlie Lee. Litecoin was inspired by Bitcoin and is basically the same as Bitcoin in terms of technical principles. The creation and transfer of Litecoin is also based on an open source encryption protocol and is not managed by any central agency.

Charlie Lee, the inventor of Litecoin Image source: Golden Finance

Litecoin is based on the Bitcoin protocol, but has three main differences from Bitcoin:

——First, the Bitcoin network packs a block every 10 minutes, and the Litecoin network packs a block every 2.5 minutes. Therefore, it can provide faster transaction confirmation and can cope with higher-frequency transactions. Litecoin transfers can generally be confirmed within 20 minutes.

——Second, the total amount of Bitcoin is 21 million, and the total amount of Litecoin is expected to be 84 million, which is four times the total amount of Bitcoin. The issuance rate of Litecoin follows a geometric progression, which is reduced by half every four years (every 840,000 blocks), and finally reaches a total of 84 million. On August 26, 2015, Beijing time, Litecoin halved for the first time, and the next halving will be in August 2019. Friends can pay attention to it then.

——Third, Litecoin uses a different algorithm in its proof-of-work algorithm than Bitcoin. Bitcoin uses the SHA256 encryption algorithm, while Litecoin uses the script encryption algorithm. In comparison, the amount of computation required for Litecoin LTC is slightly lower than that of Bitcoin, making it easier to mine on ordinary computers and more suitable for graphics cards (GPUs) to perform calculations. However, scrypt relies heavily on the computing resources of the processing unit itself, especially memory, which makes it difficult to scale mining based on the scrypt system. It requires a large amount of memory proportional to the computing power, and the memory cost is very high.

Therefore, it is more difficult to achieve large-scale mining of Litecoin using mining machines. However, as the market value of Litecoin continues to increase, professional mining machine manufacturers have produced Litecoin mining machines. At the end of 2013, Crypto Industries, headquartered in London, UK, began pre-selling its mining machines developed for scrypt, with a computing power of 10MH/s. As of now, the latest Litecoin mining machine in China is the Litecoin mining machine L3+ produced by Bitmain, with a computing power of 504MH/S.

The past and present of Litecoin

The digital currency community has always had the saying "Bitcoin is gold, Litecoin is silver", and Litecoin was once the digital currency with the largest market value after Bitcoin.

On October 7, 2011 , Litecoin was released through the open source client on Github.

On July 3, 2013 , Mt.Gox launched an API for LTC transactions in preparation for its official launch.

On November 28, 2013 , it rose to its historical high of US$48.4799 (about RMB 380).

On March 19, 2014 , Huobi.com, China's largest digital asset trading platform, officially launched Litecoin trading.

On August 26, 2015 , Litecoin experienced its first halving. Currently, each data block can generate 25 Litecoins.

On July 3, 2016 , the Litecoin kernel development team and the Litecoin Association released the "Litecoin Official 2016 Development Roadmap", announcing that they would release a new version with features such as "Segregated Witness", "Lightning Network", and "Smart Contracts". Litecoin was the first to experiment with some of the things that have been the subject of much debate in the Bitcoin community.

As of 15:00 on April 24, 2017, its market value ranked fourth.

Top 5 altcoins by market capitalization

What is Segregated Witness and why is it driving Litecoin’s surge?

What exactly is driving the surge in Litecoin prices? Market observers were unsure at first, but from recent observations, there is no doubt that it is closely related to the news that Litecoin is trying to activate Segregated Witness (SW).

Segregated Witness drives Litecoin prices up Image source: Golden Finance

Segregated Witness was originally a solution for Bitcoin expansion. The 1M size limit of Bitcoin blocks has caused congestion in transactions on the blockchain and needs to be solved urgently. Segregated Witness allows Bitcoin's signature field to be separated from the Bitcoin transfer process, and the transaction size will appear to be smaller, so Bitcoin blocks can accommodate more transactions without changing their size.

Litecoin's recent situation can be seen as a new development in the two-year Bitcoin expansion debate. In fact, Litecoin has 4 times the capacity of Bitcoin, and it will not have block capacity issues for many years to come. Litecoin announced the activation of the Litecoin Segregated Witness function in order to support a larger transaction volume and solve the transaction scalability problem.

In early April 2017, Charlie Lee wrote a letter specifically for miners to help them gain a deeper understanding of Segregated Witness and its advantages.

The letter stated,

“We support SegWit not because of the small block size conflict, but because SegWit can fix transaction malleability, which in turn allows us to add more new technologies such as Lightning Network. SegWit also makes many other upgrades possible, all of which will greatly help the development of Litecoin. At a time when Bitcoin is stagnant due to the block size problem, if we can activate SegWit on Litecoin, Litecoin will definitely shine. ”

Lee believes that interoperability between different cryptocurrencies is a key to reducing transaction costs. The main benefit of Segregated Witness is to improve transaction scalability and enable the use of the Lightning Network. Because the Bitcoin transaction fee on the Lightning Network will be higher than the Litecoin transaction fee, it makes economic sense for Lightning Network transactions to be transferred back to Bitcoin via Litecoin to obtain a lower transaction fee rate. In addition, through cross-chain transactions on the Lightning Network, both parties can quickly trade BTC and LTC without risk.

Therefore, when the founder of Litecoin has repeatedly stated that Segregated Witness will make Litecoin rise, it is not surprising that every surge in support for Segregated Witness causes a surge in the price of Litecoin.

What is the current status of Segregated Witness?

It is reported that the activation threshold of Litecoin Segregated Witness is set at 75% computing power. According to the requirements, more than 75% of the blocks in 8,064 consecutive blocks vote in favor of Segregated Witness, and then wait for an 8,064-block cycle (based on Litecoin's speed of one block in 2.5 minutes, this will take about two weeks), then Litecoin will officially activate Segregated Witness.

Litecoin Segregated Witness Support Rate Image Source: Golden Finance

Litecoin Segregated Witness has gone through these:

——On December 23, 2016 , according to a report from bitcoin.com, the Litecoin community appears to be voting on whether to adopt Segregated Witness.

——On February 9, 2017 , Charlie Lee revealed in an AMA event on 8btc that he planned to force the implementation of Segregated Witness. The next day, Litecoin’s main network will start the activation process (voting) of Segregated Witness.

——On April 4, 2017 , the support rate for Segregated Witness exceeded 59%. After the announcement of the increase in support for Segregated Witness, traders seemed to be very optimistic about the news. A week ago, the price of Litecoin broke through $9 on Monday, and the price of Litecoin almost doubled, creating a two-year high. There was a lot of trading volume on mainstream trading platforms such as Huobi.

——On April 6, 2017 , more than 70% of the Litecoin network’s miners voted in favor of Segregated Witness, but it has not yet received the support of the majority of Bitcoin miners. After the Segregated Witness voter turnout increased, Litecoin traders pushed the price of Litecoin up to $11.17. Overnight, Litecoin’s market value increased by about $140 million.

——On April 7, 2017 , its price hit a new high since 2014, reaching a maximum of RMB 65.5. At that time, the support rate of miners for isolated witness reached 69.4%.

——On April 10, 2017 , Litecoin founder Charlie Lee pointed out that Litecoin's daily transaction volume has exceeded 10 million US dollars. In an article on the Segregated Witness website, he pointed out that the candidate code for the release of Segregated Witness has been marked and the beta version will be released soon.

——On April 12, 2017 , the BW mining pool voted to support Litecoin Segregated Witness. Litecoin was only a stone’s throw away from the activation threshold. At that time, the price of Litecoin on major external trading platforms had exceeded RMB 80, while several major domestic exchanges did not allow withdrawals, resulting in the price of the domestic version of spicy strips remaining at around RMB 60.

——April 24, 2017 , as of press time, the Litecoin SegWit voting rate is 74.73%, and the current Litecoin price is 76.29 yuan.

Litecoin Segregated Witness Support Rate

Jiang Zhuoer, founder of Litecoin Mining Pool, posted on Weibo on April 22 that Litecoin Mining Pool and Ant Pool have begun voting in support of Segregated Witness. So far, the Litecoin community has reached a consensus on activating Segregated Witness.

Current Litecoin mining pool computing power share

How to buy Litecoin? What should I pay attention to?

Huobi kindly reminds you that the recent Litecoin market has fluctuated too much. Investors are advised to operate with caution according to their own risk tolerance. Currently, there are few formal platforms in China that can trade Litecoin, so please be careful to distinguish them.

If you want to invest and trade Litecoin, it is recommended to choose a platform that has reliable qualifications, can ensure the safety of user assets, and can provide professional services, such as Huobi.