Our weekly updates are put together by folks deep in the crypto scene, giving you a clear picture of what's happening without overwhelming you.
To Watch This Week
AIRDROPS + ALPHAOct 15, 2024
Markets
Canary Capital Files for Litecoin ETF Just Days After XRP Move
Canary Capital announced Tuesday that it has filed an S-1 registration with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with the intent of launching a Litecoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). The move comes less than a week after Canary Capital fired an application to launch an XRP-based ETF, following in the footsteps of asset manager Bitwise, which submitted its own XRP ETF application on October 1. Such moves signal continued interest in crypto-backed ETFs, following the SEC’s earlier appro...
Mar 29, 2024
Markets
Litecoin Price Spikes After CFTC Calls It Commodity Alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum
Meme coin lovers may be having a great month, but Litecoin (LTC) hodlers are celebrating today with their coin taking the spot as the second best-performing cryptocurrency in the top 100, with a bullish performance in the last 24 hours that saw its price spike nearly 11%. This comes on the fifth day of relatively slow markets, with Bitcoin and Ethereum correcting by less than 2% in the same period. The global cryptocurrency market cap today sits at $2.79 trillion, marking a mere -0.1% change in...
Aug 2, 2023
Coins
Litecoin Just Had Its Third Halving—Here's What That Means for LTC
The rate of newly issued Litecoin, the 12th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has today shrunk in an event called “the halving.” Just like Bitcoin, every four years or so, the supply of Litecoin rewards given out as mining rewards gets cut in half, meaning fewer of the digital coins are created. The idea is to lower the rate of inflation on the network—fewer coins mean higher value per coin. In theory, this should drive up the price, if everything else about the network stays the same. “Lik...
Jun 30, 2023
Markets
Remember Litecoin? The Silver to Bitcoin's 'Digital Gold' Is Soaring
Earlier today, it was Bitcoin Cash—now, it's Litecoin. The two cryptocurrencies have received renewed interest from investors since Wall Street-backed EDX Markets listed them last week. Both were arguably fading into obscurity but are now soaring—especially Litecoin, which just reentered the top 10 biggest digital assets by market cap. The Bitcoin fork is up 23.6% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko, trading hands for $104.63. That makes it one of the best-performing digital assets rig...
May 20, 2023
Coins
Meme Tokens and NFTs Took Over Bitcoin—Now It's Happening on Dogecoin and Litecoin
Meme coins are on the rise in unfamiliar places thanks to Ordinals, the project launched in January on the Bitcoin network. It started with an NFT-like effort to "inscribe" assets like artwork and profile pictures onto Bitcoin’s blockchain, but soon evolved to support BRC-20 tokens minted using the same protocol. Now, thanks to the sensation surrounding Ordinal inscriptions and meme tokens on Bitcoin—not to mention the increasingly high network fees that resulted—inscribers have brought the late...
May 18, 2023
Business
Litecoin Activity Hits All-Time High Thanks to Ordinals Mania
Ordinal mania has caused increased blockchain activity—but not just on Bitcoin’s network: Litecoin, the 12th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is experiencing a huge surge in transactions. Litecoin’s blockchain last week experienced over 584,838 transactions in one day, the highest in its history, according to crypto data website Bitinfocharts. Activity has since dipped—363,855 transactions took place yesterday—but Litecoin use is still higher than it has ever been. The cryptocurrency, w...
Feb 20, 2023
Coins
Coder Brings Ordinals to Litecoin as Bitcoin Inscriptions Surpass 154K
Ordinal Inscriptions and the ability to mint content other than transactions on the Bitcoin network have taken the blockchain by storm, with over 154,000 inscriptions created to date, according to Dune analytics. Now, a developer has adapted the Ordinals project for rival proof-of-work blockchain Litecoin. Launched in 2011, Litecoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency designed to be quicker at processing transactions than Bitcoin. Litecoin was created by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee, who s...
Nov 22, 2022
Coins
Solana Market Cap Shrinks Below Litecoin in Protracted Descent
The market cap of the popular proof-of-stake blockchain, Solana, slipped below that of the OG proof-of-work blockchain, Litecoin, according to Coingecko. Once dubbed the "Ethereum Killer," Solana's SOL token began 2022 trading at $178.89, with a market capitalization of $55.09 billion in January 2022. Then came crypto winter, the merge that saw Ethereum—the once proof-of-work blockchain—switch to proof-of-stake, and the fallout from the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Now, SOL is curren...
Jun 8, 2022
Coins
Crypto Exchanges Delist Litecoin Over Privacy Feature Concerns
Litecoin will be delisted on Bithumb and Upbit, two South Korean Crypto exchanges, over modifications made to the coin that enable greater privacy when conducting transactions. In their notices regarding Litecoin, Bithumb and Upbit stated they were shutting down market support for the 20th-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization because its newly activated Mimblewimble Extension Blocks (MWEB) network upgrade conflicts with South Korean anti-money laundering (AML) regulation. Upbit pointe...
Oct 5, 2021
Business
Fifth-Largest Bank in U.S. Now Offering Bitcoin Custody Services
U.S. Bank, the fifth-largest banking institution in the United States, today announced that it has launched custodial services for Bitcoin. Institutional investment managers with private funds in the U.S. or the Cayman Islands can now tap the bank’s service to store their private keys. The bank is working with financial services and technology firm New York Digital Investment Group, or NYDIG, as its first sub-custodian for the service. U.S. Bank previously signed on to administer NYDIG’s planned...
Sep 13, 2021
Business
Litecoin Surges on Debunked Walmart News
Editor's note: A Monday morning press release that bore Walmart's logo and corporate headquarters turned out to be fake, Walmart announced. Decrypt was among a number of media outlets that published the news. Our story was quickly amended. A press release from what appeared to be Walmart announced that the giant retailer would be accepting Litecoin for payment. Coverage of the news drove Litecoin's price 34.6%, until Walmart announced that the press release was fake. The apparent pump and dump s...
Sep 4, 2021
Coins
Litecoin and Dfinity Surged More Than 10% Overnight
Altcoins Litecoin and Dfinity both made significant overnight gains today as crypto’s global market capitalization inched forward by less than a percent to settle on $2.53 trillion. Litecoin shot up from fifteenth to thirteenth on the cryptocurrency market capitalization leaderboard as the coin's value blew up 16.2% overnight to secure a price of $221.60. Litecoin currently has a market cap of $14.75 billion. Litecoin was launched in October 2011, almost three years after Bitcoin. It was create...
Aug 22, 2021
Business
PayPal Launches Crypto Services in UK
Starting Monday, PayPal’s U.K. customers can buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. Customers can buy as little as £1 ($1.3) worth of the cryptocurrencies using their bank account, PayPal balance, or debit card through a crypto tab on PayPal's website and mobile app. The U.K. is the second nation to access these services after the digital payments behemoth rolled out its crypto suite in the U.S. in October 2020. It offers the same four coins to U.S. customers. PayPal...
Jul 28, 2021
Technology
New Jersey Gives BlockFi Another Month Before New Account Ban
Crypto lender BlockFi is facing lots of questions from state regulators. It just bought a little more time to address some of them. According to BlockFi CEO Zac Prince, the New Jersey Bureau of Securities has extended a deadline to stop offering its BlockFi Interest Account (BIA) in the state to September 2. The state's attorney general originally filed a cease and desist against the company on July 19, demanding that new BIAs, which promise up to 7.5% annual returns on deposited crypto, cease b...
Jul 15, 2021
Coins
PayPal Ups Limits on Bitcoin Purchases to $100,000 Per Week
Online payments firm PayPal today announced it has increased the amount of cryptocurrency U.S. customers can buy via its platform to $100,000 per week. Purchases were previously limited to $20,000 per week. It's also dropped its annual limit. "These changes," it stated in a press release, "will enable our customers to have more choice and flexibility in purchasing cryptocurrency on our platform." U.S. customers (outside of Hawaii) are currently able to buy, sell, or hold Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, E...
Jun 19, 2021
Business
Bitmain Releases Mining Machine For Dogecoin and Litecoin: Reports
At an exposition in Chengdu today, Beijing-based mining hardware giant Bitmain released a new mining machine designed for mining Dogecoin and Litecoin, according to a tweet by blockchain journalist Colin Wu. Exclusive: On June 19th, Bitmain released the new Litecoin/Dogecoin mining machine L7, with a hashrate of 9500MH/s and 3425W, equivalent to 19 sets of L3+, and the price is $15000, overseas purchase price is reduced by 13%. The delivery time is November 2021. pic.twitter.com/QlursqRPUj — W...
Jun 18, 2021
Business
NASCAR Driver Landon Cassill To Be Paid Entirely In Crypto
NASCAR driver Landon Cassill partnered with crypto brokerage firm Voyager Digital for the remainder of the 2021 NASCAR season. He will be paid fully in cryptocurrency for the duration of the 19-race sponsorship deal. “It’s something I’m familiar with, I’m comfortable with it, and I feel like I have a good handle on what I’m willing to risk and what I need to pay my bills,” Cassill said on being paid in cryptocurrency. According to data site Comparably, salaries in NASCAR range from as little a...
Mar 6, 2021
Coins
Crypto Markets Stabilize, Ending Nasty Slump
It’s been a week of ups and downs for crypto fans everywhere as the price of Bitcoin continues to yo-yo under the influence of macroeconomic events and growing institutional interest. But the market's stabilizing after it suffered a tough crash late last month. After briefly crossing $50k on Thursday for the second time this year, Bitcoin’s prices fell the following day, causing the currency to depreciate to a price of $47.7k as of 12 PM UTC today. Bitcoin’s volatility has been closely pegged...
Mar 2, 2021
Coins
Grayscale Bought 80% of All Litecoin Mined in February
Crypto fund manager Grayscale Investments has bought the majority of Litecoin mined last month, data from markets tool Bybt shows. Grayscale currently holds over 1.44 million Litecoin ($248.33 million), making it the firm’s third-largest crypto holding after Bitcoin and Ethereum. The firm is one of few services in the US that allows accredited and institutional investors to purchase cryptocurrencies. It offers over nine crypto-based “trusts” that are available both as a subscription or as a tr...
Feb 27, 2021
Coins
Cardano Keeps Thriving While Bitcoin and Ethereum Slump
After a sharp market pullback, the price of Bitcoin dropped from a peak of $58k on February 21 to a low of $49k the following day. As of Saturday, the market has stabilized somewhat while retail investors have been buying the dip—but some troubling trading signals leave the market in a precarious place. As of the time of writing, Bitcoin sits at $44,454, up 1.68% in the last day but down over 15% this week. Ethereum’s price is in even greater trouble. Currently valued at $1,482, Ethereum is do...