Litecoin (LTC) has been away from the spotlight for quite some time now. This has more to do with other cryptocurrencies gaining traction than Litecoin (LTC) itself. The LTC/BTC daily chart above shows how sharply Litecoin (LTC) has declined against Bitcoin (BTC) since the beginning of the correction. Interestingly, the price is now at the same support line from which it rallied up back in early and late 2017. If the price were to take off from here that would mark an end to this correction and would be seen as the beginning of a new cycle.
However, the catalysts that have propelled the price of Litecoin (LTC) in the past might no longer be there! The biggest catalyst responsible for Litecoin (LTC)’s massive rally in 2017 was Coinbase. When Litecoin (LTC) was added to Coinbase, it was the cheapest cryptocurrency available to Coinbase customers to buy. As most Coinbase customers seeking to find the next Bitcoin (BTC) are more interested in buying full coins than portion of a large coin like Bitcoin (BTC), they rushed in to buy Litecoin (LTC).
FOMO, as a result of Litecoin (LTC) being the cheapest coin on Coinbase coupled with the fact that Litecoin (LTC) back then was seen to be faster and cheaper than Bitcoin (BTC) convinced users looking to strike it big to fill their bags to the brim with Litecoin (LTC). This drove the price of Bitcoin (BTC) to new highs in a matter of weeks. In such a short time span, Litecoin (LTC) was now trading above $300 when just a few weeks back it was trading under $100. For those lucky enough to have bought before April 2017, they could have gotten in for a price of $5 per Litecoin (LTC)! For those that bought low and sold high, Litecoin (LTC) was one of the best investments they could have made in 2017 but now that Litecoin (LTC) is no longer the cheapest coin on Coinbase and Bitcoin (BTC) is addressing the issues that Litecoin (LTC) set out to solve, what will be the future of Litecoin (LTC)?
The above chart for LTC/USD shows that Litecoin (LTC) had an incredible rally from April to October but it did not stop there and shot up even more aggressively towards its ATH in December 2017. Litecoin (LTC) is not the only coin to have undergone a correction since that high, and it is reasonable to expect that a coin will correct before its next bullish cycle. Most analysts are argue that not much have changed between 2017 and now and that such rallies are possible even in 2018 and 2019. I agree that similar gains are still possible in the next two years as we are yet to see big money get into the game.
However, there is one thing that has been changing rapidly since 2017 and now that no one is paying attention to. That thing is research, scrutiny and due diligence to invest in projects that will be around long term. Up until 2017, no one really cared about what to invest in. Everything was shooting up and it did not matter much if you invested in Litecoin (LTC) or Ethereum (ETH) or a small cap coin like Golem (GNT). However, the long period of correction has made investors a lot more cautious. They are avoiding project that are no longer serving a purpose and looking to invest in projects that will continue have a use case, 10 or 20 years from now.
