Litecoin Prices Surge Above $70 as Crypto Market Tops $175 Billion

The cryptocurrency markets continued to rise today as the asset class observed strong gains, including most notably, perhaps, litecoin.

The digital asset once dubbed "the silver to bitcoin's gold" passed $78 to achieve a new all-time high at 06:54 UTC this morning, according to CoinMarketCap data. Standing at $75.57 at press time, litecoin has increased by 17.28 percent over the past 24 hours and an astonishing 49.37 percent over the last week.

Long in the doldrums, litecoin has seen a resurgence since its community moved to activate Segregated Witness (SegWit) on its network early in May – a scaling solution that also opens the door to new features such as smart contracts going forward.

Once again, South Korean exchange Bithumb has seen the majority of the trading, hosting 22 percent of the litecoin volume in the last 24 hours. Chinese exchanges OKCoin and Huobi are close behind, with 18 and 14 percent, respectively.

While not yet close to its record high of over $0.40 set back in May, Ripple Labs' XRP token has also seen gains – rising 13.51 percent over the week to $0.25 today.

Dash and monero, too, have climbed this week, with press time prices at $382 (21.60 percent over seven days) and $140 (46.45 percent), respectively.

Taking a wider view, the combined market capitalization of all digital currencies attained a new record high today, and had passed $175 billion at press time. That's up from $170.8 billion just yesterday, also going by data from CoinMarketCap.

Disclaimer: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Ripple.

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