Advertise Jobs at BTCManager BITCOIN PRICE: 2,709.07 HIGH: 2,745.00 LOW: 2,663.01 BTC = USD #TRENDING STORIES Next Event Money 20/20 Europe • June 26-28, 2017 European-focused event on Fin-tech, providing an overlook of the disruptive ways in which consumers and businesses manage, spend and borrow… → BTCMANAGER TWITTER: TOTAL TWEETS: 3850 total FOLLOWERS: 16159 official hashtag:#BTCManager BTCMANAGER Upward Momentum in Bitcoin Price Intensifies on Litecoin's Role as SegWit Testbed Over the past month, the price of bitcoin has consistently maintained its upward trend and momentum, increasing from around $1,185 to $1,624 as litecoin moves to implement SegWit.In the past seven days, bitcoin price recorded a 15 percent weekly gain, breaking the $1700 barrier on May 9 for the very first time.The short and mid-term surge of the bitcoin price coincides with the successful activation of the Bitcoin Core’s development team’s transaction malleability fix and scaling solution Segregated Witness (SegWit) on litecoin.

Specifically, Charlie Lee revealed on April 12 that litecoin reached its 75 percent threshold for activation.After the initial approval, litecoin implemented SegWit upon the completion of its two-week lock in period.In the monthly bitcoin price chart provided by various bitcoin market data providers including Cryptowatch, BTC-USD really began to surge when the 75 percent threshold for SegWit activation on litecoin was met.As seen in the chart provided above, the bitcoin price began to surge dramatically on April 16, exactly four days after the SegWit activation threshold was met.It can be said that bitcoin price was not directly affected by litecoin’s SegWit threshold activation on April 12 because it still had to undergo a two-week lock-in period led by its miners.In other words, the miners had to maintain the 75 percent threshold for two weeks.In the early stages, Bitmain and its litecoin mining pool declined to support the upgrade.Ultimately, Charlie Lee, Director of Engineering at Coinbase and Litecoin founder led the Litecoin Roundtable Agreement and convinced the rest of the miners to activate SegWit.

As the probability of SegWit activation and adoption increased, the price of bitcoin continued its upward trend.While many analysts have also attributed bitcoin price’s recent growth trend to the explosive growth in the Japanese bitcoin exchange market and the rise in the demand for bitcoin from institutional investors, based on the price chart and the timeline of SegWit activation, it cannot be denied that the upgrade activation on litecoin had a significant impact on bitcoin price in the mid-term.There exists a few reason why the bitcoin community highly anticipated the activation of SegWit on litecoin.Structurally and philosophically, litecoin is very similar to bitcoin.In consideration of the similarity between the two, miners including F2Pool previously stated that they would most likely push SegWit on bitcoin if its impact on litecoin is positive.Simply put, miners wanted to observe SegWit’s effect on the on-chain capacity increase of litecoin and the introduction of two-layer solutions such as Lightning.

The Lightning Network has been an important component of the Bitcoin Core team’s scaling roadmap.It also is the Core team’s leverage over the industry and community as Core developers including Luke Jr claimed that Lightning could optimize the current bitcoin block size by up to 90 percent.washington bitcoin farmOn May 3, Charlie announced that the Lightning network will be integrated into litecoin and that the altcoin's development team will actively work with Lightning Labs; this should lead to greater interchangeability between bitcoin and litecoin, negating the need for exchanges as people would be able to instantly exchange between the two using Lightning.ethereum labsCharlie wrote: The Lightning Network will be on Litecoin!bitcoin hacking pdf

The Litecoin devs are really excited to work with Lightning Labs on such an exciting technology.https://t.co/XGDp6XHRXV — Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) May 3, 2017 While the growth of the Japanese exchange market and the rise in interest of institutional investors in bitcoin remain as major driving factors of bitcoin price, litecoin’s effect on the bitcoin price cannot be dismissed.bitcoin prison planetOnce scaling issues of Bitcoin are resolved, the community anticipates the bitcoin price to reach $2,000, a key psychological resistance level.bitcoin philippines corporationJust as Bitcoin’s block reward halved in the past, Litecoin will undergo the same same process on Tuesday, August 25th.litecoin riseIn anticipation of the halving, the Litecoin Association says that it is a milestone in the cryptocurrency’s 4-year history.bitcoin amd vs nvidia

Also read: Litecoin Undergoes Changes With Official Branding Guide The association also released a video that elaborates the entire process of Litecoin’s halving, informing that after the halving, Litecoin will reward miners with 25 coins rather than 50 coins per block.bitcoin sync with networkThe video also explains that the halving process happens every four years for both Litecoin and Bitcoin, as dictated by their respective protocols.litecoin createdThis halving is the first for Litecoin, whose protocol is set to halve the block reward every 840000 blocks.As August 25 approaches, August, miners have started showing concern over the halving.They are worried about how the diminished block reward will affect Litecoin’s price and mining profitability.However, the Litecoin Association does not feel worried about the Litecoin’s price, as it believes the price is not paramount to achieving the cryptocurrency’s goal.

Furthermore, the released video shows that as inflation slows, there are fewer coins for the market and everyone’s price rises rather than falls.However, this issue cannot be overlooked, as Litecoin miners’ concerns are similar to those of Bitcoin miners when Bitcoin underwent its first halving, with the lower block reward affecting the returns on investment for mining rigs.Likewise, Litecoin miners will still have to remake the money they spent on their hardware before they can make profits, which may become more difficult when their block reward incomes are cut in half.The Litecoin Association understands the questions and concerns miners have and attempted to address them by releasing an educative video, which explains that miners who invested in hardware can expect their income to fall by 50 percent.This could mean that continuing to mine may no longer be profitable after miners add in the cost of electricity.The Association says that, in such a situation, miners face two options.

On one hand, the decreased supply growth may raise the Litecoin price and miners will continue to operate as usual.on the other hand, if the price doesn’t rise, miners will no longer be able to operate.If this occurs, the network hash rate will drop as mining declines, resulting in a more centralized network.If the network hash rate drops low enough, the mining difficulty will automatically adjust itself.Then, the miners who had to stop mining will be able to resume.However, there is no way to actually predict what will happen to the price.Though Litecoin has been the most successful altcoin, based on its adoption and acceptance, there is still a concern about the future of the cryptocurrency when it comes to mining, as things have moved passed GPU mining.Now, Litecoin mining is done with ASIC machines.However, there is less activity in the new ASIC mining hardware.Additionally, the first generations of miners are already getting obsolete, which leaves only a few miners still mining Litecoin.