Dogecoin and Litecoin are fast becoming the subjects of a rags-to-riches story, with major companies announcing integration – but why?

Prior to developers confirming the launch of merged mining between the two currencies, Litecoin and DOGE were both experiencing some serious lag. As Cointelegraph reported, a series of unfortunate events and general lackluster sentiment had sent the price of the latter tumbling, while the community continued to make its opinion of Litecoin clear on Bitcointalk under the burgeoning topic ‘Litecoin is officially dead’.

At the same time, however, it would seem that outside the crypto inner circle, the pair is going through something of a renaissance. Doge’s market cap jumped 27% to over US$13.5million in 24 hours recently, and remains around US$12.5million. While Litecoin is yet to see a similar upturn, yesterday’s announcement by online travel agent CheapAir.com may be a step to reversing its fortunes as well.

- Dogecoin creator, Jackson Palmer

Cheapair made history last year when it became the first in its field to accept Bitcoin for hotel and flight bookings. Following a partnership with GoCoin, an external payment processor which facilitates Litecoin and Dogecoin payments, CheapAir has now confirmed that it will add both currencies to its payment options.

“We’ve gotten a great response since we began accepting [bitcoin], and we had some requests for dogecoin and litecoin. We figured why not?” CEO Jeff Klee told CoinDesk, also adding that Bitcoin sales since the launch have now surpassed US$1.5million.

CheapAir is not the first to embrace the Litecoin-Dogecoin ‘pair’, with BTCTrip announcing its intention to support payment earlier this month, also facilitated by GoCoin.

“We are still very bullish on alt-coins,” GoCoin CEO Steve Beauregard told Cointelegraph.

- Steve Beauregard, GoCoin's CEO

GoCoin itself began working with the currencies back in March, at a time when the health of both was already in doubt. Its recent international expansion, in partnership with wireless payment processor Apriva, to over 1000 international businesses came a good fortnight after the BTCTrip announcement, and it remains curious as to where the perceived demand has come from.

Further investigation reveals a generally upbeat sentiment about the health of the altcoin market, however, with MasterCoin Foundation Executive Director Ron Gross telling Cointelegraph:

“Since the infrastructure is easy to develop once & deploy everywhere, I foresee that a lot of stores will start accepting multiple cryptocurrencies as the cost to do, both in money and the 'paradox of choice' cost to the user, can be made very negligible with proper engineering and UX design.”

Gross went on to say however that early adoption by some organizations could simply revolve around a “PR boost” and that its success on the popularity of altcoins is “still dubious.” Altcoins, he suspects, “are perceived by a lot of people as just experimental vehicles, and most innovation done on alts can always be imported back in the Bitcoin, which is in a massive leading position.”

Nevertheless, with Mike Hearn’s recent criticism of those who overtly champion Bitcoin’s capabilities, the playing field could still well be open to competition in some markets.

Images via The Australian and LinkedIn

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