Recovery in Crypto Currencies Continues

The impressive recovery in the crypto currency market continued apace on Wednesday and the early hours of Thursday as most major coins were all heavily in the green. By far the most impressive gainer in this respect was Litecoin which went up by over 30% on Wednesday peaking at around $210. The slick coin founded by Charlie Lee continued its inexorable climb on Thursday morning where it was up by around another 12% to reach the $230 mark and was still climbing at press time.

Another currency which was looking extremely positive and bullish was Bitcoin Cash which rose considerably on Wednesday by about 11% and was flirting with the $1400 level - this is almost a 100% climb from its low of $800 reached only a few days ago. This crypto currency which is being touted as the next step for the original Bitcoin has improved massively in recent days being the first coin to show some signs of a recovery after the early February bloodbath in which most currencies lost at least 40% of their value and others dropped by around 60%.

Stellar Lumens also posted strong gains and is now flirting with the $0.50c mark, an impressive 30% climb over two days. The other top ten crypto currencies such as Dash and Ethereum Classic also continued moving forward with the former now also flirting with the $700 mark, although it is a far cry from the $1500 mark registered in mid-December when crypto currencies were at an all-time high. The latter somewhat stalled in progress over the past 24 hours but it is still on the cusp of its impressive rally where it gained almost 40% in three days.

The top two crypto currencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum also recorded good steady gains over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin finally broke through the $9,000 barrier and is now trading at over $9,800 which is tantalizingly close to the five figure mark - a level that has not been seen since mid-January before the inexorable climb to the bottom began. Ethereum continued climbing steadily and was at around $930 at press time, indicating that it was ready to start another climb upward to the sensitive $1,000 mark.

The Litecoin price leaped by nearly 30 percent on Tuesday in response to the announcement that payment processing startup LitePay would officially launch in less than two weeks. The rally enabled LTC/USD to crack the $200 barrier, and it raised LTC/BTC to its highest value in nearly three years. This is all welcome news for those investors who had got in at the top of the Litecoin price rally of around $350 after which it declined to close to $100. Litecoin is currently priced at $197 on Bitfinex, although premiums on other exchanges have hoisted its global average just above the $200 mark. Litecoin now has an $11.1 billion market cap, lifting it to fifth in the rankings, an impressive performance over the past few days. Significantly, although Litecoin is still trading well below the peak USD value it set in mid-December, LTC/BTC is trading at .0227 BTC, its highest point since July 2015. Diverging from previous increases, LTC trading volume is very evenly distributed across the world's major exchanges. At 26 percent, OKEx accounts for the largest slice, while GDAX ranks second with 14 percent. South Korea-based Bithumb and Upbit each prices Litecoin at an eight percent premium over other exchanges, but their trading pairs only account for a combined 10 percent of global LTC volume.

Itecoin's price rally rally comes in direct response to the announcement that LitePay, a payment processing company modelled after industry stalwart BitPay, is scheduled to launch on February 26 that has seen a flurry of activity on social media and other discussion platforms. The company quietly made the announcement on Twitter on Monday, but word seems to have travelled slowly, given that the rally is just now taking off.

According to the San Francisco-based company's website, LitePay will offer many of the same features as BitPay. Most notably, it will provide businesses with the ability to accept LTC payments that are settled in fiat currency. Additionally, it will issue Litecoin debit cards, which users can fund with LTC and use at virtually any retailer. This undoubtedly led to the price jump and the currency is still climbing consistently.

Since Litecoin markets itself as a payment-focused cryptocurrency, the establishment of LitePay's infrastructure will greatly aid its utility for this use case. However, another theory is that Litecoin's bullish pivot could be tied to the announcement that a group of developers is going to fork the main Litecoin blockchain on Feb. 19 to create Litecoin Cash, airdropping coins to all wallet addresses that hold LTC at the time of the fork. This should also increase the price whilst creating another crypto currency in the mould of Bitcoin Cash that could lead to further impressive growth.