Last Modified: November 10th, 2021

As a response to Litecoin’s (LTC) massive surge of 34.55% in prices this past week, including a jump of 17.8% in price just today to $269.7, let’s take a look at what LTC is about, and what has led to this rally recently.

The blockchain network of Litecoin, according to its official website, is a “peer-to-peer Internet currency that enables instant, near-zero cost payments to anyone in the world. Litecoin is an open source, global payment network that is fully decentralized without any central authorities.” In other words, Litecoin is designed to solve the problem of sending and receiving money, particularly in the front of cross-border payments, which before the advent of digital wallets and currencies were time-consuming and fee-intensive.

As a disruptive innovation in the financial world, it is no wonder that Litecoin and its token, LTC, received a lot of attention from investors, especially as it is one of the first cryptocurrencies developed. Litecoin actually retained its spot as a top-5 cryptocurrency in terms of market cap for quite a while, but it faded out of the top 10 as other more popular altcoins arise, such as DOGE, DOT, and ADA.

Now, what has caused this recent surge in prices? Many would simply assume that it is an after-effect of strong bullish sentiment sweeping across the entire cryptocurrency market, as BTC and ETH led the charge in price gains in the last few weeks up until Monday. However, this is not the only reason behind Litecoin’s rally. According to data provided by Messari, the popular coin pair trading instrument of LTC/BTC rose by almost 14%, which indicates a rise in capital migration from Bitcoin to Litecoin markets, meaning that investors hold the belief that Litecoin may have higher upside to price gains in the near future, at the very least, compared to Bitcoin. In addition, Litecoin also announced that Grayscale Investments is looking to upgrade its Grayscale Litecoin Trust’s status from an ETP to exchange-traded fund (ETF), which would bring about more traditional investors to the exposure of Litecoin’s price movements. When the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust officially became an ETF, there was an instant jump in Bitcoin’s prices, so we could expect similar patterns to exhibit once the Grayscale Litecoin ETF becomes a reality.

LTC’s rally since September 29, including the 17% jump today

All in all, Litecoin has been breaking expectations since late September, as its prices has surged more than 77% since September 29^th. This recent rally has put Litecoin back on the map for investors as an altcoin that has massive upside, and it would be foolish to not looking into Litecoin as a potential addition to your cryptocurrency investment portfolio.