Litecoin-only Visa Card Launched, ADA Hard Forks, ETH, XRP Dec. 7

LTC

Litecoin has seen the release of an LTC-only Visa card for use in online and physical retailers by US users. The card is set to be rolled out across more than 30 European countries in the near future.

Litecoin’s founder Charlie Lee tweeted the news and the Litecoin Foundation also shared an update on the launch.

The card allows crypto deposits in BTC, ETH, XRP and LTC, and Litecoin. The stored LTC balance is then debited for U.S. dollars at merchant terminals. The card can be used anywhere that accepts Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay. The initial launch of the platform saw a big uptake in the Litecoin community and the program was then rolled out further.

The development is the latest in a strong year of adoption in Litecoin and users may initially forget that being able to store currencies like Litecoin on a debit card can be used as a store of value. 

In these troubled times, an investor can move across borders or jump on a plane with decentralized money in a way that gold or silver can’t match.

Litecoin is holding above the $80.00 level but is currently pausing with Bitcoin’s inability to leap above the $20,000 level. 

Bitcoin is sitting at $19,150 and hasn’t seen any major selling yet, but time below the resistance could add to jitters. Data last week still showed large “whale investors” still had large amounts of BTC sitting on exchanges, which suggests that investors are nervous about a potential sell signal developing. 

The U.S. dollar continued its decline last week and if a relief bounce comes then that could take some of the wind out of Bitcoin’s sail.

ADA

Cardano has announced a hard fork in December as part of the IOHK development team’s upgrade to the Goguen phase of the protocol. 

Goguen is being implemented to add smart contract technology to the Cardano blockchain. This will be the third aspect of the upgrade with scaling and governance being the next two development stages. Cardano was ranked as the most actively developed cryptocurrency project in 2019 and the new developments could entice further users.

The ADA coin was trading at $0.0800 in October before a move that culminated near $0.2000. The resistance for further gains is at $0.16-1700 and a move above could head for the $0.2500 level. The coin is currently ranked at number 8 in the list of coins by market cap with a valuation of $4.8bn. LINK is the obstacle at number 7 but the market cap is only $350 million more.

ETH

Ethereum has seen a strong rally in November and the coin now sits near the $600 level with resistance ahead at $640. 

The increasingly-important Grayscale investment group is seeing a rise in Ethereum investors. In an interview with Bloomberg the company’s Managing Director said: 

Over the course of 2020 we are seeing a new group of investors who are Ethereum-first and in some cases Ethereum-only. There’s a growing conviction around Ethereum as an asset class. 

Ethereum has seen its reputation growing since the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) boom in the summer. Ethereum also saw a successful launch of the Beacon chain this month, where investors staked ETH for a potential 18-month lock-up period. The process is a key step on the way to the long-awaited ETH 2.0 upgrade.

XRP

Ripple’s XRP was boosted Coinbase plans to support Flare Network’s upcoming Spark airdrop. Eligible customers holding an XRP balance on Coinbase or Coinbase Pro on December 12th will receive Spark tokens from Coinbase after the Flare network launches later down the line. The number of Spark tokens received will depend on the amount of XRP held at the snapshot time.

Spark is the Flare Network’s native token and the network is meant to bring Ethereum-style functionality to the XRP Ledger. The project team stated back in August that this would be the first-ever utility fork where the origin network (Ripple) benefits from the increased utility.

Coinbase spokesperson Crystal Yang commented:

Supporting new networks and their projects is important for not only meeting customer interest, but also the continued growth of the crypto ecosystem.

XRP is holding the support above the $0.5000-6000 level at $0.6042. The airdrop may have been a cause for some of the recent volume increase but there is still a chance of further XRP gains into the December 12th cutoff, where a sell-off is possible after the event.