Now that most of the pumps originating from the Bithumb exchange have ended, peace and quiet have fallen over the cryptocurrency landscape. There is no coin really standing out at the moment, although Litecoin has noted some major gains over the past 24 hours. It appeared the currency could be on its way to reaching the US$75 mark, but that attempt fell woefully short. All things considered, Litecoin is still the only major cryptocurrency to have noted any gains over the past day.

A Small Litecoin Price Nudge Fuels Speculation

It is evident there are a lot of people who would like nothing more than to see the Litecoin price go up quite significantly. Although the Litecoin price almost reached a new all-time high overnight, there is still some doubt as to how much higher the price can go. A value of US$51.74 per LTC is quite a high amount, even though people are looking forward to seeing cross-chain atomic swaps between LTC and BTC in the near future. This functionality is expected to become available in the near future.

Other than that, there is no real reason for the Litecoin price to go up at this stage. No major news has been announced, although Charlie Lee confirmed he would be working with other developers on ensuring the Lightning Network becomes available to Litecoin users in the near future. This feature is sometimes referred to as the Litening Network, as it is the same implementation as Bitcoin’s LN but merely designed for Litecoin and only Litecoin.

While this implementation has not yet gone live on the main net, it will be tested on the main LTC network over the coming days. Assuming those trials are successful, Litecoin could become the world’s first cryptocurrency to implement a Lightning Network of some sort. Faster payments, lower fees, and new payment channels are some of the features to look forward to in this regard. Then again, it may still take weeks, if not months, before we see Litecoin’s Lightning Network come to fruition.

Glancing over the markets driving up the Litecoin price, it is not surprising to see Korea’s Bithumb in first place once again. Indeed, the company has been pushing certain cryptocurrencies up in value over the past few days. Although it appeared the Litecoin price jump would largely occur on this platform, the trading volume wasn’t there to support it. Although US$125 million in 24-hour volume isn’t bad at all, it’s not too far off from what OKCoin is doing right now. Both platforms show the price around the same mark, and indicate that there may not necessarily be any further Litecoin price action today.

All other currencies previously “pumped” by Bithumb traders have also lost some of their gains. This goes for Bitcoin Cash and Monero specifically, both of which are slowly coming down in price after enjoying positive momentum earlier this week. It seems the cryptocurrency markets are preparing to enter a period of sideways action for the time being. That is rather strange, considering we have seen nearly US$9 billion in 24-hour volume across all cryptocurrencies over the past day. Most of that volume came from Bitcoin and – for some odd reason – E-Dinar Coin.

All things considered, there is no way to justify a major Litecoin price jump other than by purposefully pumping the LTC value. That would only hurt Litecoin’s reputation in the long run, though. The price momentum is a solid move given the developments currently taking place behind the scenes. If these developments come to a positive end, things will certainly pick up for LTC in the coming weeks and months. For now, a US$51 price per LTC is more than fair, as it remains firmly in fifth place of cryptocurrencies ranked by market cap.