(Updated October, 2018) Nicknamed the silver to Bitcoins gold, Litecoin emerged onto the scene in 2011 to help remedy some of the flaws inherent in Bitcoin. To this end, Litecoin was designed to offer a more abundant supply of coins, a maximum cap of 84 million to be exact, as opposed to Bitcoins 21 million cap. Additionally, the amount of time required to carry out a transaction with Litecoin is a fourth of the time required for the same transaction using Bitcoin. This significant reduction in transaction time, coupled with the fourfold increase in coin supply, is expected to facilitate financial transactions while lowering the price of a single Litecoin compared to a single Bitcoin.With that said, lets take a look at 3 top Litecoin price predictions for 2018. Read on to see how the price of Litecoin is expected to change during this year.

As things stand, Litecoin has the 7th highest market capitalization, approximately 3 billion dollars, in the cryptocurrency world, trailing after Bitcoin, about $112.3 billion dollars as of this writing, Ethereum around $21 billion, Ripple around $18 billion dollars, Bitcoin Cash around $7.5 billion, EOS around $5 billion, and Stellar around 4.5 billion. Nevertheless, performance-wise, Litecoin has outperformed both Bitcoin and Ethereum over the past year, with appreciation values reaching 2000%. Hence, attempting to make Litecoin price predictions for 2018 may be well worth our effort, regardless of the fact that all cryptocurrencies are very volatile at the moment, given their nascent state.

Speaking about volatility, you can read our article on Ripple price predictions for 2018to understand how this works.

Be it the abundant supply or the speedy transactions, the number of people using Litecoin should increase in a somewhat exponential fashion. On the one hand, Litecoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, is tethered to Bitcoin, in the sense that the increase in usage of Bitcoin spells a higher rate of adoption for the rest of the cryptocurrencies. Evidence for this phenomenon can be witnessed by comparing the price charts of both currencies, at which point the correlation becomes unmistakable.

On the other hand, with both SegWit (Segregated Witness) and a Lightning network activated, Litecoin has the potential to scale far beyond anything Bitcoin is capable of at the moment. If youre unfamiliar with what either a SegWit or Lightning network is, all you need to know is that they are technologies that enable cryptocurrency transactions to speed up while maintaining low transaction costs; hence, not only does Litecoin exchange hands faster than Bitcoin, but it also does this for a fraction of the cost, regardless of the number of transactions happening. All of these factors should influence any Litecoin price predictions for 2018.

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When I first wrote this article almost one year ago the price of Litecoin was hovering around the 80 dollar mark, give or take. Litecoin price was at $313 at the end of November 2017, $230 at the start of January 2018, $65 in August and is now at $52.34. Should the rate of adoption go up, this should increase Litecoins price. Along with the rate of adoption and the general price movement of cryptocurrencies, a commensurate increase in the number of developers working on it is expected, which should fuel the price hike.Personally, I dont really understand how the price of Litecoin is that low. Its better than Bitcoin, its faster, it brings real value and the number of circulating supply is low (58,239,528 at the moment of writing).

As a matter of fact, when Litecoins first came into existence, their creator, Charlie Lee, envisioned them as a currency used for transactions, whereas Bitcoin would become used as a tool to store value. Ergo, this is why Litecoin was dubbed as silver for the cryptocurrency world, whereas Bitcoin was designated as gold.

In addition to all of this, cryptocurrency investors attempt to hedge their exposure by diversifying their portfolio of digital coins. As a result, approximately 18% of people buying Litecoin use Bitcoin, strengthening the demand for Litecoin and cementing it as a major player in the cryptocurrency space.

For all of these reasons, it should come as no surprise that the price of a single Litecoin is expected to hit the 1000 dollar mark, if not surpass it. The problem is the fact that other coins doing the same thing are growing, and take the market share as it happened with Ripple and Cardano in the last couple of weeks.

As already said, I am a bit confused, to be honest, and I dont understand exactly why Litecoin value is so low. Because if I look at the number of coins versus market capitalization its easy to say that at 100 billion capitalizations the price could jump to $2,500, does it make sense?

Another factor with plenty of sway on the price of Litecoin, and all other cryptocurrencies for that matter, is governmental regulations, especially those of major players in the cryptocurrency space, like China, Japan, and the United States. The best case in point is how all of the cryptocurrencies plummeted after China decided to ban bitcoin and its brethren last September, causing all cryptocurrency exchanges to close up shop.

The natural question to ask at this point is to wonder to what extent any governmental institution can regulate the flow of Litecoin; after all, the whole point of cryptocurrencies is that they are decentralized. Yet, being decentralized doesnt mean that Litecoin is above regulation. For instance, should the American government decide to prohibit any company from receiving payments in Litecoin, this could damage the digital currencys value. Also, the government can close all cryptocurrency exchanges, which is what China did, or ban the importation and manufacturing of ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) along with other hardware necessary for mining coins. The bottom line is that the Worlds governments arent as helpless as some will have you believe.

Although the powers might have a few tricks up their sleeve, does this mean that regulation is inevitable? In a sense, the answer is yes. To start with, the astounding growth enjoyed by several cryptocurrencies, most notably bitcoin, over the past couple of years has given rise to several imitators and scammers, including companies that issue misleading ICOs (Initial coin offerings, which is a whole other story). Moreover, despite a total cap of 252 billion dollars seeming insignificant when compared to the enormous size of the 1.2 quadrillion futures market, the cryptocurrency market is still significant enough to come up on the SECs and IRSs radars.

As a matter of fact, during the writing of this article, it was announced that the IRS demanded of coinbase, the famous cryptocurrency exchange website, to give away the names of all the investors who have made trades that exceed 20,000 dollars in cryptocurrency over the past year. Consequently, it stands to reason that the bigger the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies becomes, the greater the impetus is to regulate them, rendering any Litecoin price predictions for 2018 suspect at best.

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So, where is Litecoin going in 2018? The truth is that nobody really knows. The best we can do is to make an educated guess based on both the past performance and the fundamentals. Therefore, whether it is the underlying technology or the price hike this year, we have reason to believe that Litecoin is expecting sunny days ahead of it. The flipside of that coin (pun intended) is that seeing as the technology is still very immature, there is no way of knowing how it will react when Uncle Sam lays down the law. It is safe to say that it can triple or even quadruple by the end of December 2019, finishing close to $200.

To sum up, coming up with Litecoin price predictions for 2018 is a delicate topic that requires serious scrutiny from different angles, and no analysis can ever be exhaustive. Because of this, we would like to know if there is anything youd like to add? Was there something we missed? Or do you agree with our analysis? Whatever you think, let us know in the comments below, and please dont hesitate to shoot us a question if you have any.

What is your opinion about the Litecoin predictions for 2018? What price do you estimate for Litecoin? Thanks for reading!

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Top 3 Litecoin Price Predictions for 2018 ~ InvestingPR.com