The price of litecoin surged to a more than three-year high earlier today.Over the course of a particularly active session, the cryptocurrency, once marketed to as the "silver to bitcoin's gold", reached as much as $15.09 at approximately 00:30 UTC, its highest since March 2014, according to data from CoinMarketCap.At the time of report, the digital asset had fallen slightly to $14.48 – yet this figure was still three times higher than price observed last month.After years of dormancy, litecoin has seen its price rally lately as it comes ever closer to obtaining the miner support it needs to activate a technical upgrade called Segregated Witness.(Should current support levels hold, it's expected upgrade will "lock in" in about two weeks).At the time of report, 77.81% of litecoin miners were signaling their support for the upgrade.SegWit, a solution originally created for bitcoin, would increase litecoin's block capacity by reducing the amount of data associated with each individual transaction.

As such, the support that miners have been showing for this solution is cited as the primary influence on the recent price increase."Over the past week, LTC basically moved in tandem with the percentage of miners supporting it.Miner support is now 99.65% [in the past 24 hours], so litecoin is doing well," said Tim Enneking, chairman of cryptocurrency hedge fund Crypto Asset Management.Over the long-term, litecoin's implementation of SegWit could have many positive implications, other analysts said.Jacob Eliosoff, a cryptocurrency fund manager, spoke to this situation: "I think this is very positive for litecoin.It is showing that that community can come together and make progress."Trampoline image via Shutterstock; Graph image via CoinMarketCap 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.Contact us at [email protected]/* */.

Litecoin prices surged nearly 70% today, ending months of stagnant market activity.Prices for the alternative cryptocurrency rose to as much as $7.04 on CoinMarketCap, compared to $4.18 at the start of trading – a rise of about 68%.According to the data, most of the trading has taken place on Poloniex, OKCoin and Huobi.bitcoin senderAt press time, the price is averaging around $6.30 across exchanges.ltc in gbpPrior to today's rally, the digital currency had seen little price volatility since roughly the start of February.bitcoin paper wallet artIn that time, litecoin prices have fluctuated within a range close to $4, market data shows.bitcoin to euro graph

Its price reached as much as $48 in late 2013.As for what's driving the rally, market observers aren't so sure.One theory floated related to efforts to integrate Segregated Witness – originally proposed as an upgrade to bitcoin's code – with litecoin, though figures show that adoption has been slow amongst the altcoin's miners.bitcoin price speculationAt least one trader has expressed surprise in light of the rally.litecoin as an investmentCharles Hayter, co-founder and CEO of CryptoCompare, told CoinDesk that he wasn't clear on what was causing prices to rise.litecoin cashTim Enneking, chairman of Crypto Asset Management, offered a similar take, stating: "This move caught us totally by surprise."make bitcoin clone

Another possible culprit: traders are simply chasing possible gains in the altcoin markets."Traders have itchy trigger fingers after the recent market volatility and are looking to jump on moves and therefore exacerbate them," Hayter said.Litecoin valuation (self.litecoin)submitted by Let's be honest.bitcoin web wallet open sourceLitecoin is at least the third crypto.Bitcoin is King, Ether has a great development team and interesting features and Litecoin has the wildcard of being everything BTC ever wanted to be.Therefore it is rightfully being added by Coinbase as the third crypto currency.So why is it battling with DASH for the fifth place whilst Dash has already halved in price and people in the trollboxes are still going on about the imminent crash of Litecoin?For every litecoin that will ever be in existence there are currently 1190 ripples already in existence!Ok a lot of them are contractually bound to be held by the company behind ripple but still.

If 1 litecoin would be worth 1190 ripples we would talk about a $40 valuation.Let's not start about the fact that it might enable segwit whilst bitcoin never manages to do that which would essentially merge the Litecoin project into the Bitcoin Core project and would become a viable competitor to take over the 1st position from Bitcoin.Am I missing something here or is LTC at $9.5 a freaking steal?π Rendered by PID 14828 on app-239 at 2017-06-24 13:23:25.418546+00:00 running 3522178 country code: SG.Litecoin developer Charlie Lee shocked many community members last month when he said “Litecoin does not need development right now.” Rather, he said, the coin needed users, liquidity, and merchant acceptance to succeed in the long term.However, the coin has struggled to achieve any of those aspirations, and the bitcoin price decline has weakened faith in the cryptocurrency industry as a whole.Consequently, investors have begun losing faith in altcoins, and in turn the litecoin price is bottoming out.

Also read: Litecoin and Dogecoin to Join Forces for Charity The litecoin price declined consistently throughout 2014 and has continued to fall during January.As recently as June, the litecoin price exceeded $10.During the past month, the litecoin price declined from $3 to $1.40–an alarming decline for one of the industry’s most prominent coins.Connor Black, CEO of digital currency service Harborly, told CCN he believes the litecoin price decline is a by-product of the bitcoin price downtrend.Even though litecoin’s largest trading pair is USD, bitcoin’s vastly superior market cap (among cryptocurrencies) governs the direction of the litecoin price.A major problem with the Litecoin price is the currency’s failure to distinguish itself as little more than the speculative younger brother of Bitcoin.Looking at this last year you see that Bitcoin and Litecoin have had strong price correlations, with Litecoin usually trending further in either direction.When Bitcoin falls Litecoin plunges, and when Bitcoin rises Litecoin soars.