Hello,

Coinlord here.

We are up 40% from my earlier post! But there are more gains to come...

I am making an update to this post to include some more LTC news!

Original Post

For everyone interested in getting started investing in crypto but feel that they missed the BTC & Ethereum boat... Litecoin (LTC) will experience explosive returns over the next 2 years.

Comparison between BTC and LTC

Source
Correction: BTC blocks are currently 12.5 BTC and LTC blocks around 25 LTC

-SEGWIT is here
Recently Litecoin was updated with the "SEGWIT" update which is short for Segregated Witness. It's a way to increase capacity and scale the network but also comes with fixes and builds a base for further updates.

SEGWIT was developed by the BTC development team originally for BTC - but LTC has installed it first due to more laxed minimum hashing requirements.

-Lightning Network
With the SEGWIT update - LTC also installed "Lightning Network" at the same time and this update is also now in production. Lightning network will allow developers all over the world to build applications using instant micropayments.
UPDATE - LAPPS, or Lightning Apps, are being developed currently! Many of these apps will be compatible for BTC and LTC both and even bridge the two coins in interesting ways! More on this later.

-Bitstamp is coming!
Next week (Week Beginning 6/19) LTC will be added to one of the oldest Bitcoin exchanges - Bitstamp. This creates yet another fiat to LTC gateway.
UPDATE - LTC was indeed added which added much fire to this amazing rally. Be on the lookout for more LTC fiat gateways soon!

-Full time staff
For years the LTC development team were all volunteers. Recently, however, with donations from exchanges that offer Litecoin trading, the LTC dev team now has a steady income. This is the first time LTC has had full time paid staff. Sometime last year LTC got the first full time developer and the 2nd full time developer is currently in training.
UPDATE - Donations to the LTC foundation are increasing!

This is in addition to the coins generated by selling special edition wallets. Last October 2016 the LTC foundation sold a special LTC edition Ledger Nano S (all sold out)
The LTC foundation currently has a preorder open for a solid gold version!

-Charlie Lee
Litecoin's creator, originally worked at Google. Sometime after founding Litecoin he switched careers to Coinbase - the largest Bitcoin/Litecoin/Ethereum exchange. Just 2 days ago Charlie announced that he is resigning as the head engineer of Coinbase to focus completely on advancing Litecoin. This is huge news for the Litecoin community and the price has already increased 5%+ since the announcement.
UPDATE Now we have an approximately 50% increase in LTC price since Lee's announcement!

-The Halvening
In 2019 the Litecoin code is scheduled to halve the inflation rate of the currency.
Each time this has happened in the past there have been wild price rises that follow. I believe it is conservative to say that LTC will be above $60 in 2019-2020 due to this factor alone - not including every other point I am making.

-Rootstock addition
The "Rootstock (RSK)" team is working to incorporate LTC into it's platform
RSK is the first open-source smart contract platform with a 2-way peg to Bitcoin that also rewards the Bitcoin miners via merge-mining, allowing them to actively participate in the Smart Contract revolution. RSK goal is to add value and functionality to the Bitcoin ecosystem by enabling smart-contracts, near instant payments and higher-scalability. Smart contracts is one of the reasons for Ethereum's explosive growth from $8 to $350 in just a year or so.

-Anonymous Transactions are coming
Last year the Litecoin team released a roadmap that includes the plan to code in anonymous transactions to increase fungibility. This is the reason for extreme price rises in other coins that specialize in fungibility.

ADDED 7/6/2017

-Atomic Swaps and other LAPPS coming soon!
What are Atomic Swaps?.. LAPPS?

Atomic Swaps will allow users to seamlessly swap between LTC and BTC for transactions. A few example possibilities that come to mind would include a user who has BTC wants to make a quick purchase of an item from a merchant that accepts BTC. He could send the transaction which would swap to LTC, confirm, and swap back into BTC in far less time than just spending BTC. I predict in the future LTC and BTC will become evermore in-twined with eachother after their crypto lightning marriage kicks off.

To see a whole host of LAPPS in development, click here

Follow @Lightning on Twitter

-Loaf Wallet in-app fiat gateway is here!

Download Loafwallet IOS

-Litecoin is catching media attention

English
Litecoin reaches new all time high of US $56 as competitors lose momentum
Litecoin Steals The Spotlight – Price Up 39% This Week
No Litecoin for Amazon, But Plenty of Good News: Charlie Lee
Bitcoin, Litecoin Post New Gains In Buoyant Crypto Markets
Litecoin Crosses $1B in Trading Volume
Life After Coinbase: Can Charlie Lee Keep Litecoin's Revival Alive?

Chinese
活动回顾：莱特爱好者武汉见面会现场火爆, 莱特币基金会收到大家踊跃捐款 Charlie Lee

Google trends also shows us there is a steady increasing of people searching for the term Litecoin

-Native Trezor support for LTC in the Trezor Webwallet!
The best Bitcoin hardware wallet has added LTC to it's arsenal of coins it can store. Litecoin is now easier and safer to store than ever before! Segwit support included!

-Yours micropayment platform moves to Litecoin!
Recently, micropayment-powered content monetization platform Yours switched from bitcoin to litecoin as its cryptocurrency of choice.
Read the whole article here

-The Network hashrate is on the verge of an explosion

Bitmain recently released the most powerful LTC miner ever with the first batches shipping this month.

Antminer L3+, 504MH/s,shipping after July 15th
Antminer L3+, the most powerful Litecoin miner. Ship-out: 15 July

-Litecoin as a safe haven
During Bitcoin's time of conflict and with less than a month left for the community to decide before either SEGWIT2x OR UASF activates on the Bitcoin blockchain, it is very likely more and more long term holders will move partial or all of their holdings of BTC into LTC until things smooth over on the BTC network. If around 10% of all BTC marketcap was moved into LTC it would nearly triple the price. We will see how things play out here.

Do you want to see Bitcoin and Litecoin accepted by Amazon?
Sign this petition!

Litecoin in all of it's entire history has never had more good news lined up for it than now. For that reason I am strongly suggesting a buy and hold strategy for LTC for 2 years minimum.

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