Litecoin has had bad days lately. As we have reported back in March, LitePay, which meant to be an all-in-one solution for payment processing using LTC had been cancelled. Due to this and because Bitcoin has been in a multi-month bear trend, Litecoin has been dropping heavily. The only positive news that helped it elevate back a little was an announcement made by a new Abra who is building a business around the network.

Abra is a high-profile crypto startup which has raised $40 million in funding so far according to Business Insider. They are backed by American Express and Foxconn, however no official information was included about the amount invested. Previously there were some rumors on a possible cooperation, but now they released additional information, expressing why they are moving towards the use of Litecoin for their smart contracts to power its wallet and exchange. The news boosted LTC’s price, resulting in a weekly high of $136 according to Coinmarketcap.

Bill Barhydt, CEO of the company held a Reddit AMA, where has explained the reasons for prefering Litecoin instead of Bitcoin:

1. commitment to bitcoin compatibility: core roadmap, p2sh support, lightning support, etc;

2. slightly better scalability than bitcoin in short term (block size and block times);

3. mining fees

Nonetheless overall sentiment is still far from bullish for litecoiners as price retraced back to $117 by the time of our article according to our price index.