Litecoin’s price is standing out in the crypto market, thanks to a gain of over 37.6% in the last 7 days. According to CoinGecko, LTC is trading US$277,25 at the time of this writing, and its market capitalization is now US$19.460 million, thus ranking 14th in the website’s ranking.
There are several key factors behind the rise, but one of the main attractions of this token is undoubtedly its speed and cheapness, which is generating a steady increase in transactions. Litecoin was intended to be an alternative to Bitcoin with low-value transfers. The cryptocurrency was created based on the Bitcoin protocol, but differs in terms of the hashing algorithm used, hard cap, block transaction times and a few other factors. Litecoin has a block time of only 2.5 minutes and extremely low transaction fees, making it suitable for microtransactions and point-of-sale payments.
These inexpensive and fast operations make it extremely attractive for everyday payments and the Litecoin team knows this, which is why they have been pursuing partnerships with different payment processors.
Last month, the Litecoin Foundation launched its Visa LTC debit card, designed to allow users to spend their LTC at all digital merchants that use Visa as their payment processor. According to the website, you can convert Litecoin into dollars in minutes and it is the only platform that allows you to actually stay in Litecoin.
“With Litecoin Card we help give your crypto real world utility anywhere major credit cards are accepted. Seamlessly deposit cryptocurrency that is converted into dollars on the fly when you spend,” announces the card’s website, and it also promises that you can sign up in less than 5 minutes and instantly receive a virtual Litecoin Card.
Afterwards, Litecoin announced on Twitter Verifone’s partnership with Bitpay. Verifone is one of the largest point-of-sale payment processors in the world, facilitating nearly US$440 billion in transactions every year, while BitPay is one of the top crypto payment processors and it carries out over 60,000 transactions each month involving Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and more.
After a big pullback in December 2018 that took the price to a low of US$22,3, Litecoin gradually recovered and it is now getting closer to challenging the resistance zone left by the previous all-time high of US$420, and will most likely manage to overcome it.
