With the price of litecoin rising, cryptocurrency investors have been forced to take another look at the project – one of the longest-running but frequently overlooked public blockchains.Once widely heralded as the 'silver to bitcoin's gold', litecoin has in recent years struggled to find its value proposition in a sea of more novel blockchain projects.That may have changed, however, now that it could be utilized as a proving ground for a new technical solution.As profiled on CoinDesk, litecoin miners have recently begun to show their support for Segregated Witness (or SegWit), a blockchain scaling solution originally designed for the bitcoin blockchain.But whereas political divisions have largely stymied efforts to approve the upgrade for bitcoin, litecoin recently passed its 75% threshold for activation.Should this hold for two weeks, the new code will go live.According to analysts, the market's recent response to this development has helped give the project new relevance to investors.

All in all, the cryptocurrency has more than doubled its market cap in response, rising from $215m on 30th March to $550m yesterday.Of interest now to traders and investors, however, is whether this capital will stay in the litecoin ecosystem, and whether the project can develop a long-term value proposition.bitcoin hmrcWhile SegWit may be a minor code upgrade, analysts argued litecoin's technical improvements speak directly to the quality of the project's development team.bitcoin wallet pakistanFurther, obtaining the consensus needed to implement the update would show the community's ability to work together, one analyst emphasized.bitcoin theft insuranceCharles Hayter, co-founder and CEO of CryptoCompare, told CoinDesk: "The activation of SegWit in litecoin is a strong positive for the cryptocurrency.bitcoin bull trap

It shows the ability to make headway where bitcoin has seen its progress stalled by vested interests."However, other experts polled for this article suggested that litecoin could at most only succeed in demonstrating the utility of the code upgrade for the bitcoin blockchain.ethereum price widgetOTC trader Harry Yeh said that if SegWit is enacted on litecoin, "bitcoin will be sure to follow", potentially removing any competitive edge.reddit bitcoin china banStill, SegWit could potentially prove a driver for litecoin's price, analysts told CoinDesk, if only in the near to medium term.bitcoin poker faucetShould the upgrade take place, Hayter told CoinDesk, he "would expect the value of litecoin to appreciate".bitcoin widget windows 8

Others suggested that rising value could become more permanent.Petar Zivkovski, COO of leveraged trading platform Whaleclub, argued that, since litecoin and bitcoin have similar codebases, litecoin could gain some of the bitcoin's market share should scalability remain an issue for the latter.will litecoin increase"SegWit activation is very likely to create a mid-term bullish trend which will increase litecoin's market cap," said Zivkovski.However, he concluded that any lasting benefits for litecoin are also good for bitcoin, given that bitcoin is the cryptocurrency that can most readily be exchanged for fiat currencies."There is likely to be some amount of wealth transfer from bitcoin to litecoin simply because right now the most convenient and straightforward way to buy litecoin is to use bitcoin."Tiny workers image via Shutterstock This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice.

Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.CoinbaseCoinbase Adds Litecoin and Prices JumpJeff John RobertsYou've probably heard about the digital currency called bitcoin.But you may not realize there are literally dozens of other so-called alt-currencies out there that work in a very similar way and that, like bitcoin, their value has been soaring in the last year.While bitcoin is far and away the biggest—its market cap is more than twice all the other alt-currencies combined—some of its rivals are gaining traction.These include Litecoin, a currency introduced in 2013 by former Google employee Charlie Lee, and that is currently the fourth most valuable alt-currency.Litecoin, as its name suggests, is a "lighter" version than bitcoin.It can process transactions four times faster and has not run into the sort of controversies related to scaling for growth that are currently consuming the bitcoin community.Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.But despite its history and positive reputation, it hasn't experienced the same recent dramatic increase in value as bitcoin or ethereum, which is the No.

2 alt-currency on the list.One reason for this could be that Litecoin is harder to obtain than those other two currencies.That changed, however, on Wednesday as the popular digital currency exchange service Coinbase made it possible for people to buy and sell Litecoin.And, indeed, prices jumped over 25 percent on the Coinbase news according to the site Coin Market Cap.The Coinbase tie-in is significant because is by far the most popular way for ordinary people—as opposed to dedicated crypto-heads—to buy and sell digital currency.Litecoin's appearance on the platform means it is suddenly a lot more liquid as an asset.Lee, the Litecoin creator who is now head engineer at Coinbase, is (unsurprisingly) bullish about the currency's potential.But his optimism is not just due to the fact it's now easier to buy and sell Litecoin.As Lee points out, Litecoin is in the middle of adopting a number of new technologies (such as Segregated Witness or SegWit) that increase its transaction speed—bitcoin backers have been trying to implement similar improvements for months, but the process has been caught up in internecine fighting."We