Litecoin price (LTC/USD) rises to near five-month high above $58

The Litecoin price (LTC/USD) has seen further gains over the past 24 hours, allowing LTC to briefly become the fourth-largest digital coin.

The digital coin enjoyed another strong session yesterday, as its price made a big move in late morning trading and broke above the $56 mark for the first time in nearly four months. The coin eventually finished the session at $55.78, which was still well above its opening price of $53.13.

LTC continued its advance during the early hours of today’s trading, with its price surging to a near five-month high of $58.13. This was followed by a sharp pull-back toward the low-$55 area.

However, the pull-back has turned out to be a temporary setback, as Litecoin has renewed its rally in the afternoon session. At the time of writing, the Litecoin price was hovering around $56.50, according to data from digital currency tracker Coinmarketcap.

Litecoin’s stellar performance allowed the coin to briefly overtake EOS as the fourth-largest digital currency on the market. The two coins are currently neck and neck with neither token being able to gain a decisive advantage.

According to the chief executive officer of BitBull Capital Joe DiPasquale, Litecoin’s strong performance since the start of the year can be largely attributed to a number of factors such as growth in the protocol’s version of the Lightning Network, anticipation surrounding the upcoming halving, “as well as Venezuela’s approval of Bitcoin and Litecoin for remittances”. Earlier this week, the South American country announced that it was launching a government-sanctioned crypto remittance service supporting LTC and BTC.

“When compared with Bitcoin, Litecoin has typically been preferred as a transactional currency because of lower fees and most importantly, faster transaction confirmation times,” DiPasquale said, as quoted by Forbes.

“This results in increasing demand for Litecoin whenever people want to transfer crypto which can then be converted into other coins or fiat, and can be attributed as one of the reasons behind the recent surge.”

In today’s trading, the Litecoin price stood at $56.49, as of 14:14 GMT. The digital coin has gained 2.2% in the past 24 hours. Its total market cap currently stands at $3.4 billion.