Litecoin prices continued a recent rally today, pushing the digital currency to its highest value in more than one year.Far from a standard cryptocurrency pump, however, the market appears to be responding strongly to its technical roadmap.Namely, the increase comes as the network nears the key 75% support level needed to activate Segregated Witness, a scaling solution that will boost block capacity.While signaling had declined slightly to 67% at press time, litecoin traded as high as $11.32 today, up nearly 40% in the space of 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data.Late yesterday, the digital currency even reached $11.42, its highest price since May 2014.These recent price increases have built on the gains the cryptocurrency began experiencing roughly one week ago, when the digital asset surged nearly 70% on 30th March.As a result of these continued upward price movements, litecoin's value surged more than 100% in a week., 24-hour volume surpassed $250m today, a drastic increase from the $10m recorded during the 30th March rally.

The major development that has coincided with litecoin's continued rise is progress toward obtaining the support levels needed for activating SegWit.First designed for use on the bitcoin blockchain, SegWit would nonetheless increase litecoin's block capacity by altering how transaction date is stored by the network.Once breached, the level of support will need to remain at or above the 75% threshold level for 8,064 blocks (roughly two weeks) before it can officially be implemented.The recent rally in litecoin prices compares to a long period when the digital currency's price experienced little volatility.The price of litecoin rose to more than $50 in late 2013 but has traded below $20 since early 2014.The past few weeks have been quite remarkable for Litecoin.Although a lot of people assumed this currency to be dead in the water, that is not the case.In fact, things are heading in a very bullish direction.The Litecoin value increased by over 700%.This is due to SegWit locking in and the Coinbase listing.

The future’s looking bright for Bitcoin’s silver, that much is evident.Litecoin has come a very long way these past few weeks.Earlier this year, one LTC was valued at US$4.That is quite a ways from its previous ATH of around US$48 in 2013.Ever since that time, a lot of people have forgotten about LTC.Things have an odd way to work itself out, though, as Litecoin is on everybody’s mind right now.The popular cryptocurrency locked in the activation of not too long ago.That in itself is quite a major boon for this popular currency.Bitcoin is trying to get SegWit activated too, yet keeps meeting opposition from miners.However, the impending activation of Segregated Witness has done wonders for the LTC price.In fact, the Litecoin value has increased by 700% so far.That gain cannot only be attributed to the SegWit activation locking in, though.Coinbase, a very popular US-based cryptocurrency exchange, Litecoin support as well.This, in turn, has given the Litecoin value another boost upward.

It looks like LTC is well underway to surpass US$30 again.litecoin to chfIt is hard to tell where this will end, although a value of US$50 is not out of the question.que es minerar bitcoinAt the same time, one has to keep in mind Litecoin does not have the same issues bitcoin has.litecoin to chfLitecoin never had full blocks to begin with, whereas it is very common on the Bitcoin network.There is also a lack of demand when it comes to Litecoin, especially from a merchant and consumer point of view.These are all issues that can be addressed quickly, though.However, the question becomes whether or not the Litecoin value can maintain this trend in the long run.In the end, a lot of people still look at Litecoin as a Bitcoin testbed.Any development changes failing to gain traction can be ported to Litecoin to see how well they do.

A lot of people will keep an eye on the SegWit malleability fix and how it affects Litecoin.These are still exciting times to be involved in altcoins, though.Anyone holding LTC may see the Litecoin value increase a bit further these coming weeks.Litecoin has more than doubled in the past five days, rising from around $4.30 to just under $9.50 after months of no activity.The reason appears to be segregated witnesses (segwit), a protocol upgrade that facilitates the Lightning Network and, potentially, sidechains.Segwit is currently going through the activation process, seemingly stalling for two months, but has now surged to just under 60% of the network’s hardware share.That is because Litecoin’s biggest pool – F2Pool, which had previously told CCN they will signal for segwit, actually began doing so on April the 1st.They continued to so signal, thus erasing any confusion on whether it was a fool’s prank or otherwise.As such, segwit now needs only around 15% to activate on litecoin as its threshold is 75%.

It is not clear whether they will be able to reach the threshold.LTC1BTC’s founder has come out against segwit, but at near 60% hashrate, segwit activation appears much more likely than otherwise.If it does activate, the bitcoin copycat will differentiate itself in many ways.Firstly, any future on-chain capacity increases on litecoin would be very difficult to achieve due to segwit’s 4:1 ratio.That is, 4MB blocks allow for an attack vector of up to 16MB, while 8MB blocks allow for an attack vector of 32MB and so on.Considering that some are arguing even 1MB is too much and capacity should actually decrease to 300KB or so, reaching any sort of consensus on 4MB with an attack vector of 16MB appears very unlikely.On the other hand, the use of on-chain capacity may be less necessary once LN is implemented as it may take out ordinary payments of $10-$20 from on-chain to LN, allowing for more on-chain space.However, litecoin has plenty of on-chain space.The currency is barely used with around just 4,000 transactions a day.

Litecoiners, therefore, will be able to choose whether they use LN or transact on-chain.Considering that LN would double charge as hubs require fees on top of fees required by litecoin miners, the network will probably only be used for niche cases, such as vast amounts of sub $1 payments.LN’s premise on litecoin, therefore, is somewhat different from its premise on bitcoin.In the case of the later, users would in effect be forced to use LN and double pay whether they like it or not.While litecoin’s case is in many ways what big blockers have been arguing – increase on-chain capacity while also implement LN so that bitcoin does not bet it all on red if LN turns out to be very inconvenient to use in practice to the point where bitcoiners leave.On that later point, if litecoin does activate segwit while bitcoin does not, it may well be the case that some Bitcoin Core developers, especially Blockstream employees, do leave to litecoin with some of their supporters probably following.That would be one way of resolving the blocksize matter.