What 2021 Has in Store for Litecoin

Litecoin’s Recent Performance
Why Did Litecoin Decline?
The Outlook for 2021

A decade ago, hardly anyone knew about blockchain technology. Today, there are thousands of cryptocurrencies, based on this technology. One of the most promising among them is Litecoin. Release on October 7, 2011, Litecoin is a cryptocurrency created by former Google employee Charlie Lee. As its name suggests, it was developed as a “lite” version of Bitcoin. It’s relationship to Bitcoin is often considered similar to one between silver and gold.

Litecoin shares many of its features with Bitcoin, albeit in a lighter version. A transaction block can be created in much shorter time, for instance. It takes just about 2.5 minutes for a Litecoin block to be generated, compared to 10 minutes for Bitcoin. The mining process also requires much less computational power. Litecoin can be mined even on personal computers. Plus, there are 84 million of these coins in circulation. In comparison, there are just 21 million Bitcoins. This larger number is reflected in the value as well. 

So, what does 2021 hold in store for the seventh largest cryptocurrency? First off let’s see how Litecoin has been performing up till now.
 

For a long time after its launch, the value of Litecoin hovered around $3. In November 2013, the crypto saw a significant rise in value, with Litecoin jumping to almost $50. But this increase was short-lived. In April 2014, Litecoin’s price fell to around $10. But the decline didn’t stop there. By February 2015, its value had fallen to just above $1. It stayed at this level for a couple of years.

Then, in 2017, the SegWit protocol upgrade was launched by Litecoin. The Lightning Network was also implemented. This attracted a lot of attention from cryptocurrency enthusiasts. In fact, the entire crypto market was bullish during this period. Combined, these factors propelled the value of Litecoin to an all-time high of $375 by mid-December 2017. 

In 2018, the alt coin faced a bearish trend once again, for most part. That only started to change in 2019. In the first half of 2019, Litecoin increased in value 4 times, rising from $31.04 to $138.2. This was driven by the scheduled halving of Litecoin, an event that takes place every 4 years. However, after the correction, the prices started falling once more. By December 20, 2019, the price had fallen to $40. The crypto has struggled to break the $50 level through 2020.
 

Litecoin has been facing multiple challenges in recent years. There have been problems finding new cash flow and the transaction volumes have also remained low. Even the August 2019 halving failed to push the price of Litecoin up for too long. Litecoin also halved the reward for its miners from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC. This saw many miners leaving the network. This was one of the main reasons for rising security concerns and falling hash rates of this crypto.
 

Many of the issues with Litecoin, which led to its price decline in 2019, still persist. So, Litecoin may not experience the 2017 and early 2019 highs in 2021. But there is still hope. The crypto has been continuously touching lower highs in 2020. This bearish signal can be disappointing, but that is not the whole story. The lower trend line has been continuously rising as well, providing support to the crypto.