Everyone is happy this morning after Hive seems to be on a huge roll after some reported huge trading on South Korean exchange, Upbit.
The problem is though, Korean exchanges and Korea in general, much as many people here on Leo finance don't seem to care about the ideological beginnings of crypto to create a peer to peer, decentralised world of fast, cheap exchange of services and goods.
Crypto has been sabotaged by financial traders who see it as nothing more than the latest in a long line of financial instruments to 'play with' in an attempt to 'make money'.
There's nothing wrong with making money of course but the whole cryptoverse has been reduced to a pump and dump scheme, where gamblers, buy and sell, only being involved in crypto because of the potential to make huge profits from the comfort of their bedroom.
It's a punters dream. A 24 hour fix, perpetuated by centralised exchanges who again, care for nothing except profit.
One of the recent victims of this is Litecoin which has been delisted by the large Korean exchanges (as well as other Aisan jusrisdictions such as Thailand) who, in a rush to bow down to their governmental masters with their oppressive regulation and to keep the profits rolling in, have delisted Litecoin.
Litecoin's crime?
To implement the mimblewimble extension block (MWEB) that allows it to scale and adds much improved privacy functions. Fearing Litecoin is about to become another 'privacy' coin, Upbit, Bitkumb, Zipmex and Bithumb rushed to remove it from their listings to appease their masters and in doing so, whacked a nail into the Litecoin coffin.
I should note at this point that it's not even a mandatory extension. You still need to opt-in to the improved privacy abilities!
The announcement from Zipmex Thailand
The influence of Korean exchanges cannot be underestimated, to wit, the last few day's Hive pump and also demonstrates perfectly, the evil of centralisation.
Litecoin has been around a long time, they celebrated their 10th anniversary last October and I've always admired their pure push to actually use crypto primarily as a form of peer to peer payment system despite setbacks and battles with authority including being only days off releasing a worldwide Mastercard which was thwarted at the last minute.
I know there is a Litecoin card now, but only available in the US. How much further down the mass adoption of crypto would we have been if disrupters like Litecoin had been allowed to push ahead unhindered.
So what we are left with here is a Crypto, ready to use with superb utility but banned in the world's biggest crypto markets.
Tragic.
Litecoin currently languishes down in 20th position by market cap and the price, a very lowly $52.49 as of time of writing but it's prone to drop further with such a reduced trading volume.
I also read on the forums this morning of whale accounts holding huge amounts of unspent Litecoin which is rumoured to be an attempt to reinforce the price and stability and I'm all for that but I fear it's a wasted exercise.