Litecoin price struggling to gain momentum: Developers say Litecoin fork is a reality

Litecoin price is trading at $147 down by 0.84% during trading on Friday. LTC/USD price tanked reaching a low of $124 on 2nd February 2018. The currency has been recovering following stability in the cryptocurrency market after the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) hearing that took place on Tuesday this week.

Barely 72 hours after the hearing, a Litecoin fork is in the countdown. The fork will lead to the creation of a new cryptocurrency, Litecoin Cash. This will be the first hard fork of Litecoin (LTC); at Litecoin block 1371111, Litecoin Cash (LCC) will be born to the cryptocurrency market. All current Litecoin holders will be given a 10 to 1 disbursement of LCC, and Litecoin Cash will revert the algorithm to SHA-256 (the same as bitcoin). This means that everyone holding Litecoin will be rewarded with 10 times Litecoin Cash. It is still not clear why Litecoin is forking but the developers argue that Litecoin mining is moving fast towards centralization.

“There is no fast, cheap SHA256 coin with good difficulty adjustment. SHA256 miners have little practical choice of hash power destination, and if they do mine blocks, they’re being paid in a currency with 10 minute block times.” Read a section of the announcement titled “Just Why”.

The quote went further to say, “We believe we can offer an excellent SHA256 coin for general usage. We love Litecoin and wanted to give something to the brave holder community. With everyone else too busy forking Bitcoin, we decided that the Litecoin blockchain was a perfect means of initial (sic) distribution for our coin.”

The developers said that Litecoin Cash will have more benefits to the cryptocurrency holders in comparison to other virtual currencies including Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. Litecoin Cash is expected to have 2.5-minute block target which will enable faster confirmation of transactions. On the other hand, transactions with Litecoin Cash will be 90% less the cost of transactions with Litecoin.

Bitcoin (BTC) went through a hard fork in August 2017 and this marked the beginning of Bitcoin Cash. It is still not clear what this means to the investors of Litecoin. The price of Litecoin has been up and down since the opening of trading on Friday. LTC/USD price long-term support is at $112; below last week’s low of $124. The immediate resistance level on the daily price chart is at $170. If the bulls would continue to buy the Litecoin despite the impending fork. The price could shoot towards the immediate resistance level.  

LTC/USD daily price chart