Litecoin, the third most popular cryptocurrency, dropped to $141, having lost over 7% of its value in the last 24 hours.
This is after the currency already dropped by more than 37% over the last year, according to CoinMarketCap.
The downward trend is experienced all across the board, with the cryptocurrency market going through a slump amidst regulation speculation.
Earlier in February, Litecoin was propped up with the news that LitePay had announced its merchant payment processing system would be operational by February 26.
However, when the system did not go live, LitePay sent an email to all current customers on March 5, announcing that it was “checking all perspective merchants” and halting card registrations “due to the negative perception and drastic actions card issuers have towards cryptocurrency companies.”
This statement was a response to an announcement made by Mastercard and Visa that they were amending the way cryptocurrency transactions would be processed from purchases to cash advances leading to more fees for users.
This was followed up with a tweet by the cryptocurrency’s founder Charlie Lee, who said in a tweet: “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.
“I am sorry for having hyped up this company and vow to do better due diligence in the future.”
Litecoin isn’t the only currency to see a drop these last few months.
At the time of writing, the value of the entire crypto-market is hovering around the $300 billion mark, according to CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin is one of the victims of a larger scale crypto fire-sale after social media platforms Facebook and Twitter decided to follow Google in banning cryptocurrency advertising on their platforms.
With cryptocurrencies becoming more and more popular among casual investors, a recent survey also uncovered that Litecoin is the third most popular currency, after bitcoin and Ethereum.
The study sought to find out what millennials (18-34) would invest in with $10,000.
The study discovered that “9.19% of Millennials (18-34) would invest the $10,000 in cryptocurrencies, compared to 4.04% of Generation Xers (35-54) and 3.08% of Baby Boomers (55+).”
