Although it had been a rumour for quite some time now, the Litecoin community will rejoice at the news GDAX has added LTC trading. This news is great for the community, although it does not give Litecoin any more usability than it had before. Moreover, the volumes on GDX are small to nonexistent right now. Then again, there was enough demand for this addition, according to the exchange operators.
LTC Makes Its Way To GDAX Instead of Coinbase
It has to be said, a lot of people will be disappointed when they hear this news as well. While it is positive to see Litecoin added to GDAX, the platform is not a big name by any means. Granted, it is a sister company of the Coinbase exchange, which decided not to add Litecoin themselves for some unknown reason.
According to the company statement, there was a big demand to enable Litecoin trading on GDAX. That seems rather surprising, considering the number of use cases for LTC is very limited From a speculator’s point of view, this choice could be justified, though. Since most people in cryptocurrency are speculators, they will hope for a price increase based on this news.
Litecoin has been around since 2011, and has often been referred to as being the silver to Bitcoin’s gold. So far, LTC has never been able to live up to those expectations, as merchant adoption is even lower than Bitcoin’s. Moreover, there are very few payment processors accepting Litecoin right now, which is not helping matters much.
At the same time, the addition of LTC to GDAX may spur a new wave of currency adoption. If more people get convenient access to this currency, they may come up with additional use cases over time. For now, Litecoin can be traded against the US Dollar – for US customers only – and Bitcoin.
It will be interesting what this means for the overall litecoin ecosystem. The addition to GDAX can create a bit more liquidity, even though the platform is far from popular. It is possible we will see a slight Litecoin price increase based on this news, even though that run will not last unless more people start using LTC instead of holding it as an investment vehicle.
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