Litecoin prices fell roughly 20% in less than 24 hours, and the culprit is apparently a single tweet.The digital currency declined to as little as $9.19 at 12:29 UTC today, after reaching a high of $11.45 yesterday.According to data source Coinmarketcap, this represented a 19.7% loss for the digital currency.Yet, analysts suggest the price movement is the latest example of how cryptocurrency prices can be impacted by relatively minor events, in this case, speculation about the future of an upgrade to the litecoin protocol.First developed for the bitcoin network as a way to increase the capacity of network transaction blocks, there are now high hopes litecoin could be a useful proving ground for Segregated Witness, a blockchain scaling solution.Developers, for instance, have expressed their interest in testing SegWit on litecoin as a way to ease concerns about its deployment on bitcoin, and traders have responded in turn.The tweet that analysts identified as triggering this sharp drop, however, shook confidence in this outcome.

In the message, Wang Chun, co-owner and chief administrator of mining pool F2Pool, expressed his concerns about Segregated Witness and warned that he may need to pull his mining pool's support for the proposal.bitcoin catching up slowAt issue is that F2Pool accounts for roughly 35% of the network's mining power.bitcoin catching up slowStill, less than two hours later, litecoin creator Charlie Lee tweeted that he had spoken with Chun, who would continue to signal for SegWit.bitcoin getting segwitThough with the scare over, it seems markets were still affected.valor bitcoin eurOver the last several days, the litecoin network has repeatedly approached the key 75% support level it needs to activate SegWit, and as such, the tweet sparked concerns the technical proposal might not be activated.litecoin live chart

At the time of report, 67% of miners were signaling their support for the change, including F2Pool.Going forward, analysts said the blockchain asset will likely experience continued volatility on the outcome of this upgrade.ethereum gpu mining windows"Litecoin's jumps and drops lately all seem to be tied to speculation as to whether it will manage to activate SegWit," algorithmic programmer Jacob Eliosoff told CoinDesk.bitcoin tax finlandHarry Yeh, managing partner of investment manager Binary Financial, offered a similar sentiment, stating that a lot of litecoin's price movements had to do with SegWit activation.bitcoin highest payoutThe drama takes place as the price of litecoin has enjoyed sharp increases over the last several trading sessions, with data suggesting it has surged roughly 175% from its peak to trough over the last week.bitcoin url pool

Twitter chalkboard image via Shutterstock The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies.)submitted by π Rendered by PID 14114 on app-234 at 2017-06-24 11:44:45.744620+00:00 running 3522178 country code: SG.Litecoin continues to fall from a recent high of nearly $39 to now trade at around $27 as attention and focus seems to have moved elsewhere since it activated segwit around four days ago.Price instantly dropped after segwit activation, quickly falling by $10, after it experienced a nearly similar rise of around $15 mainly in anticipation of the much expected segregated witnesses (segwit).Now that segwit is activated, the currency doesn’t seem to have much to talk about.So attention appears to have moved elsewhere, sending the price lower with activity on litecoin’s public spaces reduced.The reason may be because segwit doesn’t really have any significant effect for litecoin as it enjoys plenty of capacity which no one seems to want.

So, once segwit activated, nothing really happened as far as end-users are concerned.The litecoin holders, however, might keep holding for the Lightning Network, a second layer protocol on top of litecoin that is intended to increase capacity to tens of thousands of transactions.There are reports of tests payments, but through a command line interface which most litecoiners can’t really use.Actual user friendly wallets may take some time, and maybe, once launched, might perhaps hype litecoin once more.However, that will probably quickly die out too because litecoin’s problem isn’t capacity.Litecoin’s problem is the fact that no one wants to use it and no one wants to use it because it’s a bitcoin copycat.Litecoin offers nothing really that bitcoin doesn’t.Sure, it might have slightly faster confirmation times, but they appear to be following the full blocks settlement layer path so those confirmation times don’t matter.Bitcoin, on the other hand, is mainstream now, re-enforced recently after it was splashed in front page papers and prime news-shows across the world on top of allegations that Trump’s Press Secretary and an aid to the President-elect Macron used bitcoins.

So, litecoin can’t really directly compete with that sort of network effect by just offering nothing, something supported by the fact that it barely handles 4,000 transactions, making segwit and LN on litecoin kind of irrelevant.But, I suppose it gave us journalists something to talk about so it made for a good side-show while it lasted, although, who knows, the currency might take over bitcoin as some litecoiners were claiming at the peak hype.Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are those of the author and do not represent those of, nor should they be attributed to CCN.For a real-time Litecoin price chart, click here.Litecoin saw a fall in price by around 10% today as segregated witnesses (segwit) hardware share dropped to 63% from nearly 70%.The reason for its drop is not quite clear, but it follows a statement by Wang Chun, F2pool’s co-founder – the biggest litecoin pool – that he was reconsidering segwit signaling.Speculation increased today that Bitmain/Antpool, another big litecoin pool, was to add new hardware to stop the activation of segwit.

No evidence was provided to back the rumor, but Jihan Wu, Antpool’s co-founder, is against segwit’s activation in bitcoin if the Hong Kong agreement is not followed.Moreover, LTC1BTC’s founder has come out strongly against segwit, saying some weeks back that there was no way it was going to activate in litecoin.Uncertainty in the small litecoin community, therefore, has increased, as reflected by the price fall over recent days.Some are now calling for a flag-day soft fork (otherwise known as UASF) segwit activation, but if seriously proposed this is likely to increase uncertainty even further as such activation mechanism has the potential to split the currency into two or three chains, causing complete chaos.The latest developments are probably a spill-over from bitcoin’s never ending blocksize debate.A significant number of bitcoiners oppose segwit in its current state, while those who support it are now propping up litecoin.Segwit advocates, for example, have been seen contributing to litecoin public discussions in what appears to be a marketing push in the hope that litecoin’s segwit activation would increase pressure for its activation on bitcoin.