4H LTCBTC

LTC is resting Fib618 level at 0.0114BTC, right below an intersection of EMA20 and MA50 after it got rejected at Fib50 (December lows – April high) at 0.0129 BTC. LTC is right at the breakdown level – Fib618 at 0.0114 BTC and if LTC fails to defend it, it would probably dip to the Fib786 at 945k sats. Breakout level is in the zone of two Fibonacci382 levels (April high – May low) at around 0.0140-0.0143 BTC. Smashing this level would see LTC reach 0.0159 BTC or even higher (0.017 BTC). Moving averages are aligned in descending order so a leg down is more likely than a leg up.

Daily LTCBTC

LTC needs to break 0.0123 BTC zone to enter an intermediate bull market on the daily chart. This level is a converging point for EMA20 and descending trendline that started back from April highs. MA200 is right below the price action and should serve as a support should LTC keep this correction phase.

LTCUSD

Due to the BTC’s slump, LTC lost some of its USD value. It is still, however, hanging around the support at $84-89 on EMA20 and Fib236 level. Failing to sustain this level could see us stoop to $78 or even a local bottom of $65 (in case bitcoin drops heavily and drags the whole market with itself). A surge up would mean a re-test of the $107 resistance. One bullish scenario that could play out for LTC in the upcoming days is the formation of a bullish pennant pattern. Considering that there is less than 100 days until the LTC halving, this could be the ideal time to long litecoin.

One thing to bear in mind is the turbulent and erratic nature of bitcoin – a sudden thrust up or slide down is always on the cards which would invalidate this and all other analysis and predictions. In such cases, market is shaken up with most traders exiting altcoins and entering bitcoin positions or seeking shelter in stablecoins, especially in the initial phases of bitcoin pumps and dumps. So it is always a good idea to keep a close eye on bitcoin’s behaviour before opening a long or a short on any other coin in the market. Should this happen, stop by again to check out our updated charts and thoughts. Trading volume is big but questionable – reported volume in the last 24hrs is $3.1 b and “Real 10” (trading volume on the exchanges that provably prevent wash trading) volume is of course much lower – $85 million. This means that LTC’s liquidity is highly inflated and overstated by whopping 37x.

Moreover, LTC comparatively has a solid buy support, according to coinmarketbook.cc. Buy support is measuring sum of buy orders at 10% distance from the highest bid price. This way we can eliminate fake buy walls and whale manipulation and see the real interest of the market in a certain coin. LTC currently has a sound $19m of buy orders measured with this method, which sets LTC buy support/market cap ratio at 0.43%, a slightly above average value. Bitcoin and Ethereum have a 0.27% and 0.28% ratios, respectively. This novel metric indicates there are a lot of manipulations, inflated liquidity and fake orders on all crypto trading pairs, including LTC pairs.

Social Metrics

Litecoin’s sentiment score, measured by the market analytics firm Predicoin, paints a neutral picture. Predicoin wraps its analysis up into a single simple indicator known as the SentScore, which is formed from

the combination of five different verticals:

1. News
2. Social Media
3. Buzz
4. Technical Analysis
5. Fundamentals

Interpreting the SentScore’s scale:

• 0 to 2.5: very negative
• 2.5 to 4.0: somewhat negative zone
• 4.0 to 6.0: neutral zone
• 6.0 to 7.5: somewhat positive zone
• 7.5 to 10: very positive

Litecoin currently has a Sentscore of 4.9, a significant drop from the 6.5 it had back on April 10th. Overall, Predicoin’s Sentscore is an excellent indicator of community interest and can provide useful insight into which coins are trending right now. Litecoin is obviously not one of them.

Mid May Update: Fundamentals

To assess fundamental health of a project, we used the FCAS metric. FCAS is a comparative metric whose score is derived from the interactivity between primary project lifecycle fundamentals: User Activity, Developer Behavior, and Market Maturity.

There are a few sub components which provide data to each fundamental:

User Activity is comprised of Project Utilization and Network Activity
Developer Behavior is comprised of Code Changes, Code Improvement and Community Involvement
Market Maturity is comprised of Liquidity and Market Risk. Market Maturity has less than 5% impact on a project’s overall FCAS.

FCAS ratings are on a 0-1000 point scale with a corresponding letter grade. Break points are based on standard deviations in the underlying component distributions. 900 – 1000 is marked as S for superb. 750 – 899 is marked as A for attractive. 650 – 749 is marked as B for basic. 500 – 649 is marked as C for caution. And finally, below 500 is marked as fragile.

Litecoin has been ranked as the B category – basic with overall 746 points as of May 7th. By far the strongest metric that contributed to this great score is user activity that got 901 points, followed by market maturity with 769 and user activity that had only 624 points. This is a data backed claim that litecoin is not that great off fundamentally, especially its development side.

Below are some of the most important news around the project in the last 30 days.

• One particular happening heats the hopes of LTC holders as a potential instigator of a larger scale bull run. That is halvening or halving, bound to happen in August. Litecoin’s second block reward halving will take place in less than 4 months, with the reward for each block reduced from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC.
  Historically speaking, halvings have been a big deal, for both bitcoin and litecoin. The halving day does not immediately impact the price of Litecoin. Instead, the effects are felt sometimes months ahead, followed by a surge in price in the following months.
• TD Ameritrade is a popular broker for trading traditional financial assets and has already made its entry into the cryptocurrency industry. The electronic trading platform is among the backers of an upcoming cryptocurrency exchange called ErisX. ErisX is an exchange that is targeting institutional investors. The platform will offer investors the ability to trade the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC) and Ethereum (ETH) on spot and futures markets.

Below is our long-term forecast where we cover general market movements and sentiment shifts before delving deeper into the specific predictions for LTC. Litecoin was created back on 7th Oct 2011 by Charlie Lee, an ex-Google employee, who quit working in order to focus on Litecoin full time. Charlie is very active on Twitter. You can read his blog here. Litecoin was designed to complement Bitcoin by solving issues like transaction timings and concentrated mining pools.

Will Litecoin Survive Beyond 2019

Litecoin [LTC] is one of the coins that suffered biggest hit by the bear market. The overall market cap has dropped below $2.5 billion and seems the shedding is not over yet. It is a well known fact that Charlie Lee sold at the peak of LTC price and tweeted a very good advice to the rest of the holders: On December 12^th, 2017, Charlie Lee sent out a tweet telling people not to get too excited with the unsustainable bull run. Charlie warned about the pending multi-year bear market and that anyone who could not handle Litecoin (LTC) dropping to $20 should not buy it. While many attacked him as a FUD instigator, his reasons for making these assertions were rock solid and since LTC is now hovering just aboe $30. Charlie explained that every time the crypto market rises up too fast, it overshoots its real value, which leads to a huge correction, and a price consolidation. Charlie’s predictions have come true.

Charlie is not active in LTC for quite some time – it has been years since he contributed to the development of the once second largest cryptocurrency, that is now ranked at number 7 on CMC rankings. Being dubbed the silver to Bitcoin’s gold, Litecoin was introduced in 2011 as a quick fix that was supposed to solve some problems typical of Bitcoin. With new projects flooding the market in the recent years, Litecoin’s role seems to be thing of a past – LTC is the odd man out and nobody can bring about a solid argumentation for Litecoin’s purpose in the future. And the reason I think Litecoin is dead is not because of its price – it dropped together with the whole market and not by its own fault. The reason is lack of unique value proposition – it is just blunt copy of bitcoin with couple of parameters changed. It was that back in 2011 and it is that still in 2018. This lack of vision and will for separation from bitcoin and creation of your own niche will cost Litecoin its existence.

Litecoin can do everything Bitcoin can and it is often called a testnet for bitcoin. But who needs a multi-billion testnet – who needs two identical projects as one is enough and this is a winner takes all battle. Litecoin depends on Bitcoin. This is not just a hypothesis, this was Charlie’s vision from the project’s inception.

LTC enjoyed the treatment as a bitcoin’s little brother – technology was similar so exchanges and wallets could easily integrate it where ever they integrated bitcoin. This gave it exposure and liquidity which drove its price up especially as many would use it for faster transactions between exchanges or wallets as it had faster transaction time than bitcoin. In the meantime, there are many other coins that can be used for this purpose that are even faster and cheaper, almost free (Nano for example).

With Coinbase and other exchanges adding new projects, the top 10 market caps being dominated by some very diverse and colorful coins and a general lack of media attention and focus on Litecoin unless it makes some significant price movement, I’m not sure what would motivate new comers do the research necessary to learn about Litecoin’s potential. So if Litecoin’s utility as a micro-payment solution is now in question, where does it stand? I suppose it could be the “silver” to Bitcoin’s “gold”, but if Bitcoins are (basically) infinitely divisible and act as a good store of value, then what does Litecoin do?

As Bitcoin network keeps being optimized and upgraded with new innovations like Lightning Network, use cases of Litecoin will disappear and so will its reason to exist. Litecoin doesn’t have the name recognition that Bitcoin has. It does have a fantastic advantage to make improvements to itself much faster than Bitcoin does, but with the rise of so many other projects that have base codes that are already more fit for micro-transactions and scaling, has Litecoin missed the train? I would say yes.

LTC will continue to drop as investors move towards projects that are more realistic in their goals. If anyone replaces fiat, it is going to be bitcoin and not litecoin. Litecoin’s boon and curse has been its mirroring of bitcoin – they enjoyed the ride in the past but with every market contraction, we will lose projects that have no reason to exist, like Litecoin.

Our Litecoin 2019 Price Prediction

LTC, as the rest of the market, is tightly coupled and dependent on bitcoin’s price action. If bitcoin embarks on another bull run, LTC can hope for one as well. Since that is very unlikely, don’t expect much to change for LTC price-wise in this year. So 2019 will be a year of boring sideways action with minor bitcoin ignited jumps and slumps.

In general:

The main currency in cryptocurrency markets is Bitcoin and given this, altcoins tend to fuel Bitcoin runs and Bitcoin tends to do the same in return. Given this relationship, Bitcoin price movements (or lack thereof) tend to effect altcoin prices.

When Bitcoin goes up swiftly, it will likely:

1. Suppress or depress altcoins as money flows into Bitcoin;
2. Or, take altcoins along for the ride

In cases when Bitcoin plunges, it will likely:

1. Depress altcoins as money flows into fiat;
2. Or, cause altcoins  to boom as money flows into them, but this is rarely the case.

When Bitcoin moves sideways, it will likely:

1. Cause altcoins to mimic that as traders wait for a clear sign on the direction of the market;
2. Or, cause altcoins to flourish as traders look for returns in altcoins and try to get favorable trades in terms of BTC pairs.

To summarize, Bitcoin is the focal point of the crypto market in many ways, and with BTC trading pairs on every exchange, the gravity of Bitcoin is hard to evade. The majority of projects will fail — some startups are created just to gather funds and disappear, some would not handle the competition, but most are just ideas that look good on paper, but in reality, are useless for the market. 

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum said:

“There are some good ideas, there are a lot of very bad ideas, and there are a lot of very, very bad ideas, and quite a few scams as well”

As a result, over 95% of successful ICOs and cryptocurrency projects will fail and their investors will lose money. The other 5% of projects will become the new Apple, Google or Alibaba in the cryptoindustry. Will LTC be among those 5%? Hard to tell but probability for that is higher than with most other coins primarily for 2 reasons: solid use case and legit team behind the project. All of this summed up means one thing: LTC might live through couple of orchestrated and, for a regular trader, completely unpredictable pumps but the majority of time will be murky sideways trading with small volume and no significant interest from the market. 

Price will heavily depend on what BTC will do and since many analysts think BTC will not be making big moves in this year, it is hard to expect LTC will do them either. The price will probably stagnate and record slow-moving depreciation or appreciation depending on the team activity, potential technological breakthrough or high-level partnership.

Market prediction for Litecoin price

Litecoin is an original gangster coin, bitcoin’s copy from the old days, one of the strongest brands in crypto space. Let’s check what are the market experts or crypto editorials saying.

• Trading Beasts
  A crypto forecast website called trading beasts predicted that by the end of 2019, LTC might reach around $80, and only a bit higher in 2020 – predicted to rise up to $95.
• Crypto Ground
  Here comes a more optimistic prediction of cryptoground, where they say that by 2019 end, LTC might reach $90, and in five years litecoin might reach $324.
• CoinFan
  CoinFan is a website that offers price forecasts for every relevant cryptocurrency. Their algorithm is awfully bullish as they predict that Litcoin might reach $472 by 2019 end, and might reach $1687 by 2020 end.
• Wallet Investor
  Wallet Investor is known for their pragmatic cryptocurrency prediction. They believe that LTC might drop to single digits – $3.17 by December 2019, where the year high price might be around $45.

Article Produced By
Torsten Hartmann

Torsten Hartmann has been an editor in the CaptainAltcoin team since August 2017. He holds a degree in politics and economics. He gained professional experience as a PR for a local political party before moving to journalism. Since 2017, he has pivoted his career towards blockchain technology, with principal interest in applications of blockchain technology in politics, business and society.

https://captainaltcoin.com/litecoin-ltc-price-prediction-update-05-20-2019/

 

David Http://markethive.com/david-ogden