LitePay will launch tonight at 9pm - but with only some of what was promised.  The following message went out this morning to those who subscribed to their e-mail list for updates:

"Thanks for your interest in LitePay! Registration for Merchant Payment Processing accounts will open today.

Due to recent hostile actions by card issuers towards crypto companies, we have decided that offering LitePay card registrations at this time is imprudent.

We will continue to monitor the situation with regards to card services and will open registration as soon as a reliable product can be supported.

If you are a merchant and you are ready to begin registration for a LitePay Merchant Payment Processing account, please follow the link below after 9:00 PM Pacific Time and click Sign up.

Thank you all for your support as we work to give merchants all over the world the ability to accept Litecoin."

LitePay was supposed to be two things that in conjunction would bring using Litecoin in the real-world a reality.  One was merchant services so businesses could accept Litecoin, the other, a debit card to work anywhere Visa works, that would allow you to spend Litecoin by instantly converting the correct amount to to USD, and authorizing the transaction when swiping the card.

Now we're wondering - was there ever any agreement ever in place that allowed them to implement a debit card?

Other 'spend your crypto with a debit card' themed projects such as Bitwala, Cryptopay, Wirex and TenX - all had their cards canceled and rendered invalid.

At that time (early Jan of this year) Visa issued the statement: "Our actions were not specific to cryptocurrency but rather reflect the issuer's failure to comply with Visa's policies that ensure the safety and integrity of our payment system."

The question that must be asked of LitePay now is - why did you ever say it would include a card? When Visa terminated other cryptocurrency cards nearly two months ago, why did (until today) your plans still include a card for your users?

Charlie Lee took a jab today on Twitter at Bitcoin Cash.  The "flippening" refers to the high hopes of Ethereum fans - that one day things will flip, making Ethereum #1 and Bitcoin #2.  On that topic Lee says it "will never happen".

But his next sentence is bringing him both applause and hate, depending on where you stand on the topic of Bitcoin Cash.  Stating Litecoin will overtake Bitcoin Cash "this year".

The flippening (ETH>BTC) will never happen. But the flappening (LTC>BCH) will happen this year. 🐔🚀 pic.twitter.com/vn9XBdZNC3

— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) February 25, 2018

It could actually happen - to be clear, i'm saying 'could' not 'will'.  LiteCoin foundation and independent developers are expanding on LiteCoin's functionality, with an emphasis on real-world use.

At the same time, Bitcoin Cash is facing some real challenges as more exchanges adopt SegWit for Bitcoin (the original) we're expecting Bitcoin transaction times and fees to get even lower than the 4 month low they're at today.  While Bitcoin Cash supporters are some of the most vocal among social media - the reality is it's never performed beyond 10% the amount of transactions as Bitcoin on any given day.

In other words, if Bitcoin addresses it's issues before Bitcoin Cash grabs enough of the market -
there's a real risk it gets left behind and forgotten - and taking just 10% of transaction volume away from Bitcoin, while still impressive, isn't enough to insure it's survival long term against an improving Bitcoin. 

While pretty much everything took a dip over the last 48hrs, Litecoin was hit harder than most - dropping nearly 20%.

One big reason it lost more than others - it had recently gained more than others! 

There seems to be a psychological factor here, when investors are looking to pull back it's easier to justify taking some profits from something that just had big gains - and lately, the coin with big gains has been Litecoin.

Now the question is - will the release of LitePay, set to happen in just 3 days pull it out of trenches?

Well, wish I could give a solid answer on this - but best I can say is - that depends on how LitePay performs. (Read about LitePay in our previous article here) 

If it meets the hype, some pretty large gains could be expected.  If it doesn't function as promised, experiences any major downtime, or still has some bugs to be worked out - the disappointment could cause some who've held on steady to their LTC to sell.

There's no debate - next 5 days will be crucial for the coin, and it's investors are watching closely.

The "Litecoin Cash" hard fork is coming Sunday and it has a lot of people confused.  Major media outlets even pointed to this fork as a reason for Litecoin's rally the last couple days - however, that wasn't the case as traders within Litecoin forums virtually all cited LitePay as the reason for raising their investments in the currency.

So, what is Litecoin Cash? Let's take a look.

- It isn't an upgrade.  

The stated goal of the "Litecoin Cash" team is to change the mining algorithm from Scrypt to SHA-256.  Basically, like Bitcoin was. The "Litecoin Cash" team  says transactions will be 90 percent faster than the original Litecoin, however, these numbers are accurate when you have a lot of miners and not a lot of transactions.  Look to Bitcoin's transaction times if you're wondering what happens when SHA-256 mining is put under a heavy transaction load.  Oh, and toss in insanely high energy usage into the list of problems as well.

In an interview with Smartoptions, "Litecoin Cash" developer going by the name "Tanner" stated "Looking through the CoinMarketCap front page, we were really surprised that there were so few choices for SHA256 miners." well... there's a reason for that.

- This has nothing to do with Litecoin.

Charlie Lee, founder of the real Litecoin stated:

"...any fork of Litecoin, calling itself Litecoin something or other, is a scam IMO. Litecoin Cash, Litecoin Plus, Litecoin *... all scams trying to confuse users into thinking they are Litecoin."

The "team" behind Litecoin Cash doesn't deny they're just stealing the name and making a new coin, saying:

"We’re using the Litecoin Cash name simply because it has become customary in recent months for a coin which forks a blockchain to prefix its name with the name of the coin being forked. This practice has become a widely understood convention. We’re not associated or affiliated with Charlie Lee or any of the Litecoin team in any way; we are big fans though."

- Who the hell is this "team" behind it?

Nobody is sure who these guys are. Mysterious photos that reverse image searches can't find, first names only - and even a unicorn as their PR person (which ironically is a pretty bad PR move.)

 Red flags.

- Over supplied, and lack of support.

The supply is 10 times the size of the original LiteCoin - 840 million coins. With no word of exchanges, or wallets planning to support it.

Conclusion - what do you need to do to prepare for the fork? Nothing. Because it doesn't matter.

The project has been in the works for awhile, and is set to launch any day now.

It's called LitePay and the goal is simple: real world use of cryptocurrency as currency - and make it so easy, merchants will feel like giving it a shot.

So, why does this actually have a chance to succeed? Ease of use - for both the buyer and the merchant.

From a merchants perspective - they're currently giving anywhere from 3% to 7% of their transactions to whatever company processes their credit card payments.  With LitePay, that drops to 1%.  Imagine a small business doing $100,000 a year in transactions - if they can get their customers to use LitePay, they'll see an increase of up to $7,000 in profits per year - which is extremely appealing to a small retailer.

Embedding the ability to accept Litecoin as a payment on their websites will be as simple as adding just one more option to their current list of payment options such as credit cards, paypal, etc.

From the buyers point of view - none of the hassle of dealing with wallet addresses and private keys, how about just a card and pin instead?  “Litecoin users will be able to convert Litecoins to dollars and vice versa through their Visa-compatible LitePay cards, which will be usable at all ATMs or businesses that support Visa payments.” Palwasha Saaim, a Research Analyst at Lombardi Financial recently told the Nasdaq stock exchange.

The release date has been a vague 'Feburary 2018' - with the last update being given about a month ago from the LitePay team stating "we are on schedule for Feburary".

*UPDATE* - A release date of Feb 26th has been announced!

After a flood of new users in the cryptocurrency wave of 2017, existing customers began complaining about downtime and server issues on the top rated exchange, Binance.

Now after expanding their network capabilities, Binance.com has re-opened to new users.

But get in while you can, they're limiting the amount of new signups each day.  If you can't now, try again tomorrow.  "Demand is so high that the company is limiting new customers" the CEO told Bloomberg on Wednesday.

Visit Binance at https://www.Binance.com

In a surprising post just made to reddit, Charlie Lee has sold all his Litecoin.  He maintains he's more confident than ever in Litecoin's future though, and says he's still fully dedicated. 

Here's how he explained his decision...

Over the past year, I try to stay away from price related tweets, but it’s hard because price is such an important aspect of Litecoin growth. And whenever I tweet about Litecoin price or even just good or bads news, I get accused of doing it for personal benefit. Some people even think I short LTC! So in a sense, it is conflict of interest for me to hold LTC and tweet about it because I have so much influence. I have always refrained from buying/selling LTC before or after my major tweets, but this is something only I know. And there will always be a doubt on whether any of my actions were to further my own personal wealth above the success of Litecoin and crypto-currency in general.

For this reason, in the past days, I have sold and donated all my LTC. Litecoin has been very good for me financially, so I am well off enough that I no longer need to tie my financial success to Litecoin’s success. For the first time in 6+ years, I no longer own a single LTC that’s not stored in a physical Litecoin. (I do have a few of those as collectibles.) This is definitely a weird feeling, but also somehow refreshing. Don’t worry. I’m not quitting Litecoin. I will still spend all my time working on Litecoin. When Litecoin succeeds, I will still be rewarded in lots of different ways, just not directly via ownership of coins. I now believe this is the best way for me to continue to oversee Litecoin’s growth.

Please don’t ask me how many coins I sold or at what price. I can tell you that the amount of coins was a small percentage of GDAX’s daily volume and it did not crash the market.

UPDATE: I wrote the above before the recent Bcash on GDAX/Coinbase fiasco. As you can see, some people even think I’m pumping Bcash for my personal benefit. It seems like I just can’t win.

You can view the post here.

Breaking today - the NYC based financial software, data, and media company Bloomberg has added 3 more currencies to their terminal indexing service.

The 3 joining Bitcoin will be Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple!

The updated terminal from Bloomberg.

The terminal service is used not only by large banks, but major investment houses worldwide.

Many have been wondering, with Wall Street's new fascination with Bitcoin - what currencies will they be eyeing next? Tonight, we may have an answer.

Coinbase still only deals in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, and these stats are why so many different cryptocurrencies are begging to be included.

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