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Litecoin Price Pumps 10% After Mimblewimble Privacy Announcement

Esther Kim | Feb 08, 2019 | 05:00

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Litecoin has jumped in price by almost 11 percent in 24 hours following an announcement the altcoin could soon offer increased privacy.

Mimblewimble Coming To Litecoin

Data from Coinmarketcap confirms the apparent highly bullish effect of the news on LTC 00, which at press time was circling $37, its best performance since January 10.

A blog post February 7 revealed the nonprofit Litecoin Foundation was in talks with privacy-focused developer Beam to offer extension blocks on Litecoin.

Beam, which uses its own privacy coin, leverages Mimblewimble technology – a protocol proposed by an anonymous Bitcoin user which builds on the confidential transactions concept by Blockstream CEO Adam Back.

Through extension blocks, Litecoin users will have the option of significantly enhancing their privacy.

“We have started exploration towards adding privacy and fungibility to Litecoin by allowing on-chain conversion of regular LTC into a Mimblewimble variant of LTC and vice versa,” Beam confirmed in a blog post.  

Upon such conversion, it will be possible to transact with Mimblewimble LTC in complete confidentiality.

A Long-Term Turnaround?

Future development will be done under an open source license, the company added, in order to allow the community to benefit from new discoveries.

The boost to Litecoin investor confidence comes at a strategic point in cryptocurrency market history. As Bitcoin continues on the longest bear cycle in its history, altcoins have broadly suffered considerably more.

Litecoin, which even at $36 still trails 90 percent lower than its all-time highs in January 2018, has additionally faced criticism in recent times over its ultimate usefulness.

As Bitcoinist reported last month, the decision of creator Charlie Lee to divorce himself of his holdings appears to have had a significant effect on the altcoin’s image.

In August, Lee doubled down on his decision to sell, claiming he would never buy back any of his previous stake, the size of which remains uncertain.

What do you think about Litecoin’s performance? Let us know in the comments below!

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