Litecoin Cash Is Surging, but It May Not Last Long
The cryptocurrency faces issues.
Litecoin Cash is riding high, but it’s not certain that it will keep going. The fork from Litecoin, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, has been dismissed as making little changes to the original token and even described as a “scam” by Litecoin creator Charlie Lee. A lack of support from exchanges could signal a potential end to its run.
The cryptocurrency enjoyed a strong day on tracker CoinMarketCap, reaching a peak of $7.75 per token. Its current valuation of $6.72 means it has gained 32 percent in value over the past 24 hours. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that when the cryptocurrency launched on Sunday, it started at a price of around $1.40 and surged to hit peaks over five times that value.
However, this surge may not last long. CoinDesk notes that exchange support is thin on the ground, with YoBit currently the only outlet offering trades with the new token. While the new token started off strong, its 24-hour trading volume of $2.9 million is down from the $5.6 million it enjoyed earlier in the week.
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On top of this, Litecoin Cash is valued notably lower than Litecoin. When the fork occurred, holders of Litecoin at the time inherited tokens on the new network at a value of 10 LCC to one LTC. Litecoin’s value of $210.44 means that, even considering the ratio at the time of fork, Litecoin Cash doesn’t go as far in the marketplace.
That’s not necessarily a sign of failure. Bitcoin Cash, which launched in August 2017 and inspired Litecoin Cash’s name, trades at $1,299 per token at a similar circulating supply to Bitcoin, yet the original cryptocurrency is valued at nearly eight times more per token. However, Bitcoin Cash’s $22 billion market cap places it as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency, larger than Litecoin, suggesting there’s a market for the fork.
Litecoin Cash has jumped in value.
But where Bitcoin Cash touts a blocksize eight times larger than Bitcoin, a change proponents claim is the way to speed up the seven-transactions-per-second speed of the Bitcoin network, Litecoin Cash has been criticized as offering little technological changes to Litecoin. The switch from Scrypt to SHA-256, intended to put older mining hardware back to good use, has left some experts bewildered.
“Litecoin Cash doesn’t bring anything to the table,” Trevor Gerszt, CEO of crypto investment service CoinIRA, told Inverse last week.
If you liked this article, check out this video about Litecoin’s creator, a meme-loving Internet Dad.
