Litecoin has always been a currency to implement updates faster than bitcoin. As we know, in words of its founder Mr.Charlie Lee, if Bitcoin is digital gold then Litecoin is digital silver. It has always been fighting for its status to be a digital silver against bitcoin.
Even when there were discussions about SegWit & lightning network activation in bitcoin network. Litecoin got them implemented first and showed us, how important those updates are for bitcoin network.
It also is worth mentioning that even after the announcement of Mr.Charlie Lee selling all his Litecoin, It didn't get the rejection as most people predicted in the past.
Now, Litecoin has come up with two major announcements in payment settlement solution with LitePay and LitePal. These two additions can become a game changer for Litecoin network and can help increase Litecoin adoption in masses.
What is LitePay?
LitePay is around the corner, Their release is in the month of February itself. LitePay is set to provide with Litecoin Visa Debit card for people. Where anyone can load Litecoin into their wallet and make payments in USD by using Visa powered debit card. It has also come to light that their charges as nominal as 1% for card loading and spending.
How LitePay Works?
Currently, they are not open for signup but you can subscribe to their email list to get updates fast on their official website LitePay.us If you are in the United States, You'll probably be the lucky one to get the Litecoin debit card soon enough. However, it's still unclear to me if they will be providing these cards worldwide.
What is LitePal?
LitePal sounds to me like it's a PayPal rival, according to its announcement and it's official website "LitePal.io" this seems to be the case. It is more of a decentralized version of PayPal for merchants to accept online transactions worldwide with lower fees and high-speed transactions.
According to their official website, LitePal will not only be accept lightning fast Litecoins but funds can be accepted from other sources as well which includes Bitcoin, Paypal or even western union. However, their release date is by the end of this year.
Litecoin Cash Hardfork
Litecoin is also coming up with a hard fork which would reportedly provide us with Litecoin Cash but would it be safe enough to claim Litecoin cash tokens?
According to a Tweet from Mr.Charlie Lee Founder of Litecoin he quoted:
“PSA: The Litecoin team and I are not forking Litecoin. Any forks that you hear about is a scam trying to confuse you to think it’s related to Litecoin.”
“Don’t fall for it and definitely don’t enter your private keys or seed into their website or client,” he added. “Be careful out there!”
This seems to be a new trend these days. Since blockchain is open-source, It's easy for developers to hard fork a coin with no actual update in technology but just to take a portion of it from the start. We don't have much information on Litecoin Cash as if now but this hard fork seems to happen on 19th Feb tentative with 1:10 ratio which means for every 1 Litecoin you are going to get 10 Litecoin Cash, This hard fork is set to happen at block number 1371111 (According to their official website: litecoinca.sh).
However, if you transfer your coins to Binance Exchange and keep there till hard fork. If you are willing to get Litecoin Cash without sharing your private key to the network this is by far the safest solution out there, in my opinion.
We have already seen Litecoin climbing up and after the announcement of LitePay & LitePal. It is more likely to hit/cross 500 USD until March 2018. Please let me know your thoughts on this in the comment section below.
Please Note: I do my own research and like to share my thoughts with people for open discussion and Ideas. I am by no means a professional financial advisor and Always encourage everyone to do their own research before investing in any cryptocurrency.
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