Coinbase CEO Confirms Litecoin Support as Trading Volumes Surge ​​Coinbase customers and users will soon be able to purchase Litecoin with fiat money.On April 5, the company’s CEO Brian Armstrong confirmed with Litecoin creator and Coinbase Director of Engineering Charlie Lee that the trading platform will add Litecoin support to accommodate its growing user base.In February, Lee first hinted his plan to introduce the Bitcoin Core development team’s scaling solution Segregated Witness (Segwit) to Litecoin.Lee noted that the vast majority of the community does not have a proper understanding of Segwit and its potential impact on the Bitcoin network.As such, Lee hoped to prove the level of optimization and efficiency Segwit can bring to a blockchain network.Specifically, Lee spoke highly of Segwit’s ability to provide both block size increase and an infrastructure for two-layer solutions such as the Lightning network to prosper.In an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event, Lee stated: “So as developers, we need to see if the economic majority of Litecoin users want Segwit.

From what I am seeing today, the support is overwhelmingly in favor.So if it comes to that, we will have to decide what drastic measures to take to add Segwit to the protocol.But we are not close to that point yet.” For the most part, Lee’s vision of adopting Segwit for Litecoin scalability met the demands of the community.bitcoin graph inrAs mentioned above, miners, developers and users of Litecoin were in support of Segwit implementation from the very beginning.bitcoin north vancouverIn order for Segwit to be activated on Litecoin, 75 percent of the network’s miners must signal their support for Segwit.bitcoin north vancouverToday, as of April 7, the hash power consensus for Segwit activation is 5 percent away from being achieved.harga 1 bitcoin 2014

How Segwit Relates to Coinbase Support & Litecoin Trading Volume Litecoin price began to surge exponentially upon the introduction of Segwit.The daily trading volume of Litecoin continued to rise as the hashrate supporting Segwit activation increased.bitcoin ft lauderdaleIn fact, on GDAX, the Global Digital Asset Exchange of Coinbase, Litecoin trading volume surpassed US$10 million.bitcoin billionaire crash video“Litecoin GDAX volume is over $10M.raspberry pi as bitcoin minerBrian Armstrong, I think it's time we let people easily buy Litecoin with fiat on coinbase.” Armstrong agreed to Lee’s proposal and granted the final approval to the Coinbase development team to support Litecoin trading.cnbc bitcoin quote

Litecoin can be described as a replica of Bitcoin in many ways, in terms of structure, philosophy and purpose.Thus, Litecoin makes a perfect platform to test solutions like Segwit before being activated and implemented onto the Bitcoin network.most expensive bitcoin minerMost investors, traders, developers and users are currently eager to see the impact of Segwit on a commercially successful blockchain network like Litecoin.The cryptocurrency community is highly anticipating the activation of Segwit as several large mining pools including the world’s second biggest Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool announced that they will push Segwit on Bitcoin if it is successfully activated on Litecoin.If Segwit becomes activated on the Litecoin network, the price of Litecoin will continue to surge.As shown on the image above, over the past two weeks, Litecoin price increased exponentially due to the rise of Segwit support and the likelihood of activation.

Cryptocurrency markets have been going through a wild ride for a few weeks now.The threat of a bitcoin hard fork together with PoS expectations on Ethereum and the rise of zero-knowledge have rocked the markets.Investors flocked into Dash, Ether, Monero and other lesser known cryptocurrencies, abandoning bitcoin and overlooking Litecoin.That changed over the weekend, when Litecoin prices surged suddenly to above $8 USD.No one can say with certainty why this happened, but there are a few plausible explanations.The first and most obvious explanation about why Litecoin prices surged lately, has to do with reports about SegWit signaling on its network.Litecoin works in a very similar way to bitcoin, which means it also faces some of the transaction issues that bitcoin faces.Although Litecoin transactions are supposed to be at least 4 times faster than those on the bitcoin network, because a new block takes ¼ of the time to mine on this network, SegWit can accelerate transactions over the Litecoin blockchain even more.

This means that if Litecoin adopts SegWit soon (signaling is near the 75% threshold), it could outflank bitcoin in terms of day to day micro transaction functions.This, combined with the fact that Litecoin is the closest bitcoin substitute in the market, could add a lot of value to this cryptocurrency.Under this logic, it is easy to claim that Litecoin is in fact undervalued even after the most recent surge.This should give its price more room to grow at least in the following days.The other possible explanation for the recent rise in Litecoin prices could be related to SegWit signaling.Reports have pointed to Chinese investors pouring more funds into Litecoin lately.Chinese investors could be positioning themselves to gain from the value that SegWit adoption can bring to Litecoin.It is also possible that they would like to put their money in a cryptocurrency that up until now has not attracted the same degree of attention that bitcoin has, due to crackdown threats from local authorities.

Apart from the SegWit and China angles, there are some other reasons why Litecoin might be pulling up now.Investors might be looking for stability.This sounds like a simple explanation to a puzzling phenomenon.Litecoin prices have been some of the most stable – if not the most stable – cryptocurrency prices for a long time.But then, the question would be why did investors wait until now to seek refuge in a more stable asset?High risk/high reward moves based on unique information might be the answer to that question.While the markets were in turmoil and bitcoin dipped to just over $900 USD, investors made aggressive moves into other cryptocurrencies that have some innovative or exciting characteristics.Investors moved into zero-knowledge assets and assets that power smart contracts.Moving away from a bitcoin-like asset was the right move back then.Once the market was saturated, it was time to capitalize and move back to a bitcoin-like asset that doesn’t have the kind of political problems that bitcoin does.