We’ve all heard of Bitcoin (BTC), but what about its younger brother Litecoin (LTC)? Litecoin was created to be a quicker version of Bitcoin to deploy for everyday spending, without the slow transaction speeds and high fees associated with BTC.
LTC has had a slow comeback compared to other large-cap cryptocurrencies since the May 2021 crypto crash but saw a major pulse of life this morning after news broke that Walmart would begin accepting the coin for their eCommerce services. Unfortunately, within 30 minutes of this news announcement the internet and crypto news sleuths determined it to be fake news aimed to pump the coin’s price… and pump it did.
Reuters appeared to be the first major outlet to report on a Walmart-Litecoin partnership, and within 5 minutes Yahoo Finance and CNBC issued the same announcement. LTC spiked by 35% from $175 to $237 within 20 minutes of these announcements.
It seemed like the days of Elon Musk pumping Dogecoin (DOGE) with a single tweet may be behind us, but today's blip in LTC goes to show that emotions are still running hot in the crypto market as a wave of retail traders quickly bought Litecoin due to FOMO (the Fear Of Missing Out).
Unfortunately, it appears that this fake news release was more than likely created by a person/entity that had a highly leveraged LTC long position. The price spike would have allowed them to quickly close their long position for a huge profit.
Litecoin has stayed within the top 10-15 cryptocurrencies by market cap since its creation in 2011 and is the closest coin to BTC from a technological standpoint. LTC was created through a ‘hard-fork of Bitcoin’s blockchain, meaning that Litecoin is the same blockchain system as Bitcoin except for a few code changes that make LTC better suited for smaller transactions.
The biggest thing holding LTC back right now is a lack of adoption. The coins that we see in the news each day are more than just good technology and chart technicals, they are well-thought-out brands that have successfully marketed themselves into headlines.
Coins to Watch: Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Celo (CGLD),
Today’s Winners: Polkadot (DOT) hit a multi-month high at $37.95, Tezos (XTZ) up over 18% after achieving a golden cross (50 Day Moving Average crossed above the 200 Day MA)
Today’s Losers: Solana (-12%), Ethereum (ETH) touched $3,100 near $3,000 support level