Market Turns on Positive Crypto Developments

After what seems like a continual sea of red and downward spiral for the cryptocurrency markets this morning we wake to some positive news and big announcements for both Bitcoin and Litecoin.  

Bitcoin

Behind the scenes for quite some time work has been progressing to solve Bitcoin’s scalability issues and (at peak times) high transaction fees.  Lightening Labs and their proposed system Lightening Network has been in testing phase and today they have announced Lightening is going live as the startup raises $2.5 million in seed funding.  There a big names getting behind this initiative which further proves the confidence the big end of town have with the future of decentralised cryptocurrencies.  Investors include: Paypal; BitGo; Robinhood; and Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

So what is the Lightening Network?

As defined in an article by The Argon Group, “The Lightning Network is a proposed system built on top of Bitcoin that would let people instantaneously send/receive payments and reduce transaction fees by keeping them off the main network.”

This short video may help to explain this new Bitcoin development (just noting that this video was produced when Lightening Network was still in testing phase):-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=320&v=rrr_zPmEiME

This is really exciting news for Bitcoin, the technology, mainstream adoption and of course investors.  We are already seeing the market turn on the release of this fantastic development.

As any entrepreneur can relate to, Elizabeth Stark, Cofounder and CEO of Lightening Labs sums up the release with this tweet:

Litecoin Big News

Just days after the founder of Litecoin Charlie Lee’s visit here to Australia and interview with our friend Alex “Nugget” Saunders in Sydney, today Charlie has announced the Big Surprise he was alluding to last month and which we mentioned in our report on Litecoin.

The Big Surprise is that after long and thorough research, startup company Abra Global has chosen to launch its newest product on the Litecoin network.  Essentially as tweeted by Charlie Lee this morning, “Abra lets you invest in all sorts of cryptocurrencies all hedged with smart contracts on Litecoin”.

Abra is aiming to simplify cryptocurrency investing, with their mobile app product providing 20 cryptocurrencies and 50 fiat currencies.   CEO and founder of Abra, Bill Barhydt advises that it is their biggest product release ever, essentially allowing users to invest and exchange between all 70 currencies in a simple wallet interface.

As quoted on the Abra blog, “Litecoin was chosen as it met all of Abra criterion: secure, safe, scalable on-chain and off-chain, low mining fees and adherence to the published Bitcoin core roadmap. We believe that Litecoin is the best choice today for these contracts.”

Amusing as ever, Charlie Lee has published this morning on Twitter an updated version of his Litecoin checklist:

Exciting news this morning for both Bitcoin, often seen as the “digital gold”, and Litecoin the “digital silver” in the cryptocurrency markets.  Could these positive announcements be what is needed to spark the fuse for the next bull run?