Litecoin price has been on the rise since the activation of the Bitcoin Core development team’s transaction malleability fix and scaling solution Segregated Witness (SegWit). The rise in demand toward Litecoin pushed digital currency exchanges in major regions to add trading support for Litecoin users and investors.
Most recently, Litecoin creator and Coinbase Director of Engineering Charlie Lee revealed that Bithumb, South Korea’s largest digital currency exchange, integrated full support for Litecoin trading. Almost immediately after the announcement of Bithumb, the daily trading volume of Litecoin surged, from around $80 mln to $174 mln. Additionally, Bithum established itself as the third largest Litecoin exchange in the world, in a period of days.
According to various digital currency market data providers including CoinMarketCap, Bithumb has maintained its position as the third largest Litecoin exchange in the global market, processing around 8.3 percent of Litecoin daily trading volume. Currently, Bithumb’s Litecoin daily trading volume is equivalent to $14.5 mln, which is higher than that of BTC-E and Bitfinex.
Ethereum to Litecoin?
It was revealed on May 5 that South Korea officially became the largest Ethereum exchange market, with a trading volume of $105 mln and 21 percent of the global Ethereum exchange market share.
Cointelegraph attributed such explosive growth of Ethereum to the local community’s concerns over Bitcoin's scalability issues and exchange hacks. In fact, when one of South Korea’s Bitcoin exchanges Yapizon was hacked, competing digital currency exchanges experienced a surge in trading volumes of alternative cryptocurrencies or altcoins such as Ripple and Ether.
According to Jake Kim, a developer and Bitcoin researcher based in South Korea, Litecoin has begun to attract the interest of local communities and investors. Kim explained some communities are considering investing in Litecoin, which justifies the Bithumb Litecoin market’s explosive increase in trading volume.
While it is difficult to generalize the overall effect of the South Korean exchange Bithumb’s integration of Litecoin support to the Litecoin price trend, it can be said that speculators have become increasing optimistic in regard to Litecoin’s scalability approach and the emergence of innovative markets.