News that payments network Abra had committed to Litecoin (LTC) for its smart contracts failed to prop up markets April 4 as the asset reversed previous gains.
After Abra, which raised $40 mln in its latest funding round, announced it would use Litecoin’s smart contracts to power its wallet and exchange late March, LTC swiftly gained 20% to hit a weekly high of $136 Tuesday, April 3, according to cross-exchange data from CoinMarketCap.
Explaining the move, Abra’s CEO Bill Barhydt saw compatibility with Bitcoin as a major factor in the company’s choice of Litecoin over Ethereum-powered smart contracts:
“We went with Litecoin as the second asset class, after bitcoin, for our smart contract investing solution for 3 primary reasons: 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 which are primarily a function of #2 although this is more of a short term benefit as mining fees would likely sky rocket if we’re successful anyway!”
He added that Litecoin would become the “primary asset class” for Abra in the next few weeks.
Abra’s announcement buoyed Litecoin investors after prices nosedived last week in light of merchant gateway LitePay suddenly closing its doors just weeks after it opened for business.
Nonetheless, overall sentiment appears bearish, LTC shedding most of its Abra-influenced gains April 4 to retreat back to $121 by press time.
“Like everyone else, we got too excited about something that was too good to be true and we optimistically overlooked many of the warning signs,” Litecoin creator Charlie Lee had said last week in comments over the LitePay closure.