Litecoin is a “Payment Token”

In a report from the IMF published late last year, but that only surfaced on Crypto Twitter over the past few days due to a tweet from the Litecoin Foundation’s Xinxi Wang, the monetary authority’ statistics department subtly gave Litecoin (LTC) its stamp of approval. In the middle of the report, the department deemed LTC a digital means of payment.

Sure, this doesn’t mean that the IMF is going to embrace the cryptocurrency (or Bitcoin for that matter), but it goes to show that not all politicians and economists are sticking by the line put forth by the certain pundits that claim that the cryptocurrency asset class is backed by “thin air” and has no viability in the real world.

The definition that the powerful monetary authority pinned to Litecoin reads as follows:

A payment token: those intended to become BLCAs (Bitcoin-like crypto assets) and to be used universally (i.e., not restricted to a specific platform) as units of account, store of value, and means of payment.

Actually Being Used

Indeed, Litecoin is starting to find a number of real-world applications — much unlike other cryptocurrency projects. In July, the project teamed up with the Miami Dolphins, an NFL team. The partnership gives the Litecoin foundation the ability to appear in Dolphins’ advertisements and digital property.

But more pertinent to this article, the collaboration involves payment processor Aliant Payments, so that attendees of Dolphins games will be able to purchase 50/50 raffle tickets with Bitcoin and Litecoin. On this subject matter, Charlie Lee, a Google and Coinbase engineer turned creator of Litecoin, expressed his excitement as follows:

“This collaboration propels Litecoin in front of an audience of millions of people around the world at a time where adoption of cryptocurrencies continues to gain momentum and the ecosystem is able to support real world use cases in ways previously not possible. We see this as a powerful way to raise awareness and educate people about Litecoin and cryptocurrencies on a tremendous scale.”

Also, the Litecoin Foundation teamed up with Bibox Exchange and Ternio to release a debit card, which will allow users to spend LTC, BIX, TERN — the three crypto assets of the three projects — in the real world.

And most importantly, crypto payments upstart Flexa has allowed Americans to spend everything from Bitcoin to Litecoin in stores from Amazon’s Whole Foods to Bed, Bath, & Beyond.

Despite all this, Litecoin has unfortunately not been faring too well in terms of its price action. Since its halving earlier this week, the cryptocurrency has shed a good 15% against BTC, and is clearly looking to trend lower and lower.

Title Image Courtesy of Marco Verch Via Flickr