Litecoin has marked its position as one of the top altcoins within the crypto sphere for almost nine years now. Born out of a hard fork of Bitcoin, LTC is one of the purest forks of the king of cryptos. Although LTC is trading significantly lower than its previous all-time high, 2023 is the year for the crypto to break its resistance level and soar higher. Some experts even predict that Litecoin can reach a value of $100 by the end of the year.
Let’s do a detailed analysis of the crypto to make an informed decision.
LTC Price Analysis
LTC is again trading sideways after a brief surge in its price at the beginning of the year. Although it has shown very little upward momentum, experts opine that the crypto could touch $100 soon.
Litecoin had major pullbacks from its earlier highs of around $98 due to the rising negative sentiment in the broader crypto market. However, it is still trading almost 38% above its earlier monthly lows of around $65. The crypto currently boasts a market cap of $6,323,436,465.
Cryptocurrencies saw an aggressive rebound recently from their monthly lows because of several reasons. Investors' increasing interest in safe-haven assets outside the traditional financial system and the expectations that Fed tightening would be significantly lowered are some of them.
Where Is Litecoin Headed To
Litecoin now sits under a value of $100 and is poised for a significant surge, breaking the resistance level. Considering its price history, it posted a one-year gain of 38% back in 2019, after its last halving event. With the next halving right around the corner, experts are highly bullish that LTC will soar higher in the coming days.
Data says that despite its intraday pullback, LTC is holding on to the north of its 50-day Moving Average. This implies that the crypto has significantly broken back to the north of all of its major moving averages. LTC has also successfully breached the north of the downturn since mid-February. This means that the crypto has a rather positive short-term outlook for the coming months.
Assuming that the broader crypto market sentiment would remain robust along with some of Litecoin's plans for expansion and updates, a retest of recent highs in the $106 is now on the table.
Can LTC Trade Above $100 In 2023
Litecoin is currently trading at $87.44, and considering its proximity to the target level of $100, breaking into a triple-digital territory is not a distant dream for the crypto. Furthermore, as the US and global bank crisis settles down, traders have started betting more on an upcoming rate-cutting cycle from major central banks. This alone would push the price of LTC to the next major resistance levels, hovering between the $133-42 area.
Litecoin was specifically designed to be more useful as a day-to-day payment platform. Thanks to this, some of the most prominent crypto-native payment processors like Coinbase, BitPay, NOWPayments, CoinGate, Aliant, and CoinPayments accept LTC as a viable mode of payment. Additionally, top e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce have online stores with the option to accept LTC payments. Furthermore, the successful completion of its privacy upgrade in 2022, the MWEB or Mimblewimble Extension Blocks, improved its prospects as the go-to payment system for highly secure and confidential transactions.
Other LTC-specific catalysts would also contribute to its price rally this year.
Key Catalysts For LTC’s Price Growth In 2023
Litecoin, the silver to Bitcoin’s digital gold, boasted an all-time high of $412.96 in 2021. But the token has dramatically fallen to a two-digit value, followed by the 2022 market crash and other macroeconomic events.
LTC has some major catalysts in the pipeline that could trigger exciting price growth this year for the crypto. One of these factors is the highly anticipated halving event scheduled for August 2023. The creation of new LTC tokens will be slashed by 50%, reducing the supply and significantly increasing the demand and price of the token. In addition, the halving event would slow issuance from 12.5 LTC per block to 6.245 per block.
LTC’s past two halvings haven't been quite as bullish for the price growth as they have been for Bitcoin. But experts are hopeful that the situation will be different for it this time.
In addition to halving, the crypto has another growth driver that could push the price to the target of $100. This is its new partnership with the fintech giant Mastercard. As a part of the collision, Mastercard would offer Litecoin cards to customers in the UK and US regions.
This would reduce all the complexity of using LTC as a payment method within Europe. In addition, the expansion is expected to make it a more mainstream payment mechanism, boosting its value and price in the future. The alliance also aims to bridge the gap between crypto and fiat currencies and could transform Litecoin from a lesser-known altcoin to a household name soon.
Additionally, the crypto has also announced a new update to its blockchain network on March 2. This update is intended to add a security patch to LTC and increase the ease of mining the tokens.
The Bottomline
The crypto market is slowly settling, and the near-term outlook is solid. As a result, investors are now mulling over the question - is LTC a buy now for profitable returns? Although a highly volatile cryptocurrency, experts still believe Litecoin could reach a price target of $100 in 2023, given all its plans and updates.
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