As we (hopefully) all know, Litecoin is extremely undervalued. I am going to sound a very crazy here when I say it should be 2nd or (less crazy) 3rd most dominant cryptocurrency in terms of market cap, but I am going to state several good reasons as to why I think that will be the case in the upcoming months. Note that my analysis is not based on the price increasing due to technical improvements like the upcoming MimbleWimble integration (though that will certainly help), but rather due to reputation-related factors.
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Reputation and brand recognition: Litecoin has established a reputation of being Bitcoin’s “little brother”; Litecoin is seen as the “digital silver” to Bitcoin’s “digital gold”. Once newbies flood into crypto, they will buy based on reputation and familiarity rather than the technicality of blockchain; the name “Litecoin” sounds very similar to “Bitcoin” and Litecoin’s reputation as “digital silver” is easy to keep in mind. This has already happened with Bitcoin; there are tons of crypto projects out there that are technically superior to Bitcoin in every way, but lack the same brand recognition as Bitcoin.
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The Grayscale effect: Litecoin is one of the few cryptos that’s had a trust set up based on it and is being hoarded by major institutional investors like Grayscale. In fact, as of the time of this writing, Grayscale’s LTCN premium indicates that Litecoin’s current price should be about 15x higher than what it is! That means Litecoin is supposed to be worth more than Ethereum in both price and market cap!
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The upcoming supply shock effect: as of the time of the post, almost 80% of all Litecoin has been mined. Guess what happened around the time almost 80% of Bitcoin was mined? Its price shot up from $1,000 to almost $19,000 in 10 months! I’m thinking Litecoin’s price will do something similar in a smaller timespan due to its higher volatility. As Bitcoin gets more expensive to buy in wholes, people will slowly start to look for other options, look into Litecoin due to its familiarity and reputation, begin realize Litecoin is severely undervalued (sound familiar? If you thought “physical silver”, you thought right!) after seeing how much Grayscale is hoarding it and start buying it in droves.
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Bitcoin is getting too expensive to buy in wholes: people like the idea of owning a whole of something. Owning a whole of Bitcoin has now become a pipe dream for many due to its sky high price. However, you can own multiple whole Litecoins for less than $1,000! People will slowly start to realize this and start flooding into the Litecoin market
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Litecoin has staying power: Litecoin is one of the only few cryptos that has stayed in the top 10 in terms of Market cap since the early 2010s when crypto was still a relatively niche industry. As more people become aware of this and the other aspects of Litecoin’s reputation, they will start buying into Litecoin.