Litecoin (LTC), one of the most popular digital assets in the market, has reached the fourth largest position in the market. This price increase seems to be related to the fact that Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin, is talking with the team behind MimbleWimble to implement privacy features on Litecoin.
Litecoin Skyrockets 30% In Less Than a Day
Litecoin price has skyrocketed 30% in just 24 hours according to CoinMarketCap. The popular virtual currency, that was traded during the last six months between the 6th and 9th position is now the fourth largest digital asset.
The cryptocurrency moved from $33 to $43 in just a few hours, reaching a top value of $45.86. Its market capitalization has also grown from $2 billion up to $2.65 billion. Some analysts are suggesting that the current bear market could have ended. Litecoin was not the only digital asset that grew in the last 24 hours. All the top 100 virtual currencies are registering price increases.
The Reasons Behind Litecoin’s Growth
There are two reasons that helped Litecoin register such a large price increase. The first thing is related to a comment that Charlie Lee, Litecoin’s creator, made. A few days ago, Charlie Lee tweeted that the team has been talking with the Beam Privacy team. Beam Privacy is in charge of the MimbleWimble implementation.
Team has been chatting with the @vcorem and @beamprivacy team about MimbleWimble on Litecoin with Extension Blks. Pleasantly surprised that Beam has already implemented switch-commitments w/ ElGamal. It's a safety switch to protect against quantum computing breaking CT soundness.
— Charlie Lee Ⓜ️🕸️ (@SatoshiLite) February 6, 2019
This comes just a few weeks after Lee announced that they are working on fungibility implementations. The main intention was to add Confidential Transactions. At that time, Lee said that it might be difficult to implement MimbleWimble.
Fungibility is the only property of sound money that is missing from Bitcoin & Litecoin. Now that the scaling debate is behind us, the next battleground will be on fungibility and privacy.
I am now focused on making Litecoin more fungible by adding Confidential Transactions. 🚀
— Charlie Lee Ⓜ️🕸️ (@SatoshiLite) January 28, 2019
However, there is another positive thing that helped the crypto market grow as a whole. Robert J. Jackson Jr, a commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said in a recent interview that the approval of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) is just only a matter of time. Several market participants have been proposing different Bitcoin ETFs during the last years. None of them was able to receive the approval of the SEC.
Just a few weeks ago, Cboe and VanEck withdrew their application due to the government shutdown. Now it is a matter of time before an ETF is approved.
Bitcoin (BTC), the most important virtual currency in the market, is currently being traded around 3,670. In the last 24 hours, the digital asset grew 8%. At the moment it has a market capitalization of $64.36 billion. In total, the cryptocurrency market gained $10 Billion in a 24h range.
