Litecoin (LTC/USD) is investment option worth considering

Litecoin (LTC/USD) is a worthy option to consider for investors who seek ways to diversify their portfolios, Seeking Alpha has suggested in a recent analysis.

With its recent price rally, Bitcoin (BTC) has captured investors’ attention. A growing number of analysts and digital currency experts now hold an upbeat outlook about the future of the original cryptocurrency, with some suggesting that it is close to achieving mainstream adoption.

But while the Bitcoin is the undisputed leader in the cryptocurrency space at the moment, it’s just one of a number of promising options in a sea of digital currencies.

When it comes to alternatives to Bitcoin, experts often point to Ethereum, and for a good reason. It is the second- largest cryptocurrency on the market, which has had a massive rally of over 3,000 percent this year.

In addition, because of its ability to run smart contracts, the Ethereum network is considered by any as superior to Bitcoin.

According to Seeking Alpha writer Geoffrey Caveney, Litecoin is worthy of consideration as a third digital currency after the current leaders.

A significant sign in Litecoin’s favour is the fact that it is one of the three currencies currently supported on Coinbase’s platforms. Coinbase is perhaps the most mainstream trading platform the crypto industry currently has. The fact that Litecoin is the only cryptocurrency, outside the big two, which is supported there, means a lot, Caveney argues.

“There are at least a half dozen other digital currencies out there that are about as big and well-known as litecoin, including several that have larger total market caps at the moment, so it’s a big deal that only litecoin is supported by Coinbase along with bitcoin and ethereum,” Caveney writes. But Coinbase’s approval is not the only reason to consider buying Litecoin, he adds.

Over the past few weeks the Bitcoin scene has been dominated by the debate about the activation of a scaling upgrade called ‘Segregated Witness’ or ‘SegWit’. In fact, this scaling proposal has been a divisive topic in the Bitcoin community for about two years. 

The debate finally quieted down earlier this month, when the activation of SegWit was ‘locked in’, as part of a proposal dubbed SegWit2x. Even then, a small subset of the community refused to back the upgrade and on August 1 activated a ‘hard fork’, which split the Bitcoin blockchain and led to the creation of a new cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Cash.

Meanwhile, in May Litecoin became the first major cryptocurrency to embrace SegWit and it did so without any of the drama seen within the Bitcoin community. There was no hard fork, as the Litecoin community stood united behind the change.

While the majority of Bitcoin miners and users eventually agreed on the implementation of SegWit, Caveney argues that the fact that Litecoin got there first is still important. It suggests that the smaller cryptocurrency is more adaptive to improvement plans than Bitcoin.

As we’ve mentioned before, Litecoin has also laid out a clear development roadmap, indicating that it is working on implementing lightning network, which is designed to increase the scalability of transactions. It also shows Litecoin’s interest in anonymous smart contracts.

So while Bitcoin is dominating the crypto space at the moment, Litecoin is also worth paying attention to.

“A small slice of litecoin, say half of 1% of your portfolio, is worth considering with the slice of profits you may be taking on your bitcoin right now,” Caveney writes in his analysis.

In today’s trading, the Litecoin price stood at $42.86, as of 14:35 BST. The crypotocoin has fallen 0.75 percent over the past 24 hours, according to Coinmarketcap.