Litecoin fell by 3.23% on Friday. Following on from a 2.69% decline on Thursday, Litecoin ended the day at $162.90.

A mixed start to the day saw Litecoin rise to an early morning intraday high $173.76 before hitting reverse.

While falling short of the first major resistance level at $180, Litecoin tested resistance at the 62% FIB of $174.

The reversal saw Litecoin slide to a late intraday low $160.58.

Litecoin fell through the first major support level at $162 before ending the day at $162 levels.

At the time of writing, Litecoin was down by 1.09% to $161.12. A mixed start to the day saw Litecoin rise to an early morning high $163.04 before falling to a low $161.11.

Litecoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.


For the day ahead
Litecoin would need to move through the $166 pivot to bring the first major resistance level at $171 and the 62% FIB of $174 into play.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Litecoin to break out from $165 levels.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and the 62% FIB would likely cap any upside.

In the event of an extended breakout, Litecoin could test resistance at $190. The second major resistance level sits at $179.

Failure to move through the $166 pivot would bring the first major support level at $158 into play.

Barring another extended sell-off, however, Litecoin should steer clear of sub-$150 levels. The second major support level at $153 should limit the downside.

A sustained fall through the 62% FIB of $174 would form a near-term bearish trend from 10th May’s swing hi $413.91.

Looking at the Technical Indicators
First Major Support Level: $158

Pivot Level: $166

First Major Resistance Level: $171

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $322

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $265

62% FIB Retracement Level: $174more information

In a recent tweet, David Schwartz, Ripple's chief technology officer, took a swipe at red-hot automated market maker Uniswap, claiming that Ethereum’s killer app is not decentralized:

Uniswap v3 is not DeFi. If some person or group has an enforceable legal right to tell others how they can and can't use it, it's not decentralized.

Schwartz believes that the protocol is centralized because it is controlled by Uniswap Labs:

They get to choose where it runs, which is sufficient to provide total control.

The executive also mentioned that he had built the very first decentralized exchange on the XRP Ledger back in 2012 together with Ripple co-founder Arthur Britto.

Uniswap v3 was launched in late March to much fanfare, introducing such features as concentrated liquidity.

The protocol’s developer, Uniswap Labs, is funded by such massive venture capital firms as Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm Venture.

The code of the third iteration comes with a business source license whose aim is to prevent the appearance of copycats of the likes of SushiSwap.source

Crypto.com, a full-service cryptocurrency exchange and payment service platform, has today announced that its Crypto.com DeFi Wallet now supports ERC721 and ERC1155 NFTs on the Ethereum network. Moreover, support for Crypto.org Chain NFTs is currently in the works, which will enable users to even more conveniently send and manage collectibles within their wallet app.


Now, users can easily manage and admire their collection in one place by going to the dedicated ‘NFTs’ page in their DeFi Wallet
View
The ‘NFTs’ page is organized into ‘Spotlight’ and ‘Collection’ sections. Users can select their favorite pieces to spotlight at the top of the page and view specific NFTs, which are grouped by collection. Users can also view additional details, as well as share, send, and spotlight NFTs by tapping on the collectible.

Receive
In order to receive an NFT, scan or copy the wallet address from the ‘NFTs’ page, provide it to the sender, and wait for on-chain confirmation. The user’s NFT wallet address is the same as the Ethereum address.

Send
To send an NFT, users can tap on the collectible, click the ‘Send’ button, and input the recipient wallet address. Sending an NFT means transferring ownership, so always double-check the address. Only one NFT can be sent each time, so the process needs to be repeated for ERC1155 NFT copies.about more

The confidential cryptocurrency platform Beam is getting close to its next hardfork. This update aims to create a baseline for confidential DeFi opportunities.

“With the Hardfork, Beam sets the stage to fix the fundamental void in DeFi… Privacy,” explains Beam in its news update.

DeFi is the response to centralized financial institutions. It provides private ownership of financial assets to the person that owns them, rather than using an intermediary with some powers over them.

However, while DeFi provides private ownership, it does not provide privacy. All transactions are listed publicly on a blockchain like Ethereum. This means anyone can see what is being done by various wallets, and who is doing it if they know who owns that wallet.

This is what Beam is trying to address with this latest hardfork. The platform aims to provide the privacy missing from the blockchain without compromising transparency and participation.

The fork will initiate on June 13 at block 1,280,000. The upgrade includes updates to the Beam shaders and integrating the Beam Virtual Machine live to the mainnet.

However, users were warned that this new hardfork isn’t compatible with the old wallets. This means that those who don’t upgrade run the risk of having an incompatible wallet.

These updates are all aimed at increasing programmable, custom logic that can be executed on-chain. This is Beams’s big step into being a full-featured confidential DeFi platform.

Beam background
Beam’s privacy focus stems from its aim to create a platform and cryptocurrency that can be viably used in the real world.

In arguing for its platform, the company explains that no businesses want all their transactions on a public ledger.

In addition, when referencing other privacy coins like ZCash and Monero, it points out that they do not offer decentralization.

As a result, Beam has turned to the Mimblewimble and LelantusMW protocols, which offer privacy for transactions.

Mimblewimble is technology, named after a spell from Harry Potter, allowing for complete privacy of transactions with its own security framework.

With the use of this protocol, Beam is able to support different custom transaction methods, such as time-locked swaps, atomic swaps, and escrows.

A hardfork for privacy
As part of the hard fork’s effort to bring privacy to DeFi, Beam is implementing an upgrade to their own form of smart contracts, Beam shader.

Beam shader runs within the Beam Virtual machine and implements the custom contract logic.

The integration with the Beam Virtual Machine is key to these improvements and the expanded use by developers.

Both of these updates allow developers to build and deploy DeFi applications such as confidential assets, AMM pools, lending, stable coins, and others.

Overall, this hardfork aims to improve the scope of financial assets, dApps, users can create and use while still keeping them private and secure.

BeamX DAO a transition to full decentralization
While Beam is working on DeFi privacy, it hasn’t always been a fully decentralized platform. The exchange only recently raised funds to fully decentralize with the BeamX DAO.

This move is the beginning of a transition from the Beam Foundation to the DAO control, making the platform fully decentralized.

The Beam Foundation is a non-profit that aimed to foster research and develop the Beam privacy blockchain.

“The endgame goal is to transfer the process completely into the community’s hands, providing a sufficient level of stability has been achieved,” explains Beam its their news update.

The Confidential Asset (CA), $BEAMX, governs the BEAMX DAO. To receive $BEAMX, community members can stake the native token $BEAM or another asset.

At the time of writing, $BEAM was trading at $0.6272, an almost 6% increase over the last 24 hours. However, still well below its all-time high of $2.10 on April 11. source

Let's start with the good news: Ethereum transaction fees, which have been growing larger, are back down to 2020 levels.

The bad news: That's because demand for Ethereum and Ethereum-based DeFi protocols has fallen, along with prices, as partly evidenced by a 28% drop in Uniswap trades from a mid-May peak.

Ethereum transfer volume, as measured in dollars, has declined by 60% in two weeks, according to a recent report by Glassnode Insights.


DeFi: The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Decentralized Finance
That's not all.

"By almost all on-chain activity metrics, the recent month has been a historically large decline, transitioning rapidly from booming on-chain economies at [all-time-high] prices, to almost completely clear mempools and waning demand for transactions and settlement," wrote the analytics firm, referring to a paucity of queued transactions.

Glassnode also looked specifically at governance tokens for four decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, which aim to allow people to lend, borrow or trade cryptocurrencies without going through financial intermediaries. The number of transfers—and the total value of those transfers—on Compound (COMP), Aave (AAVE), Uniswap (UNI) and Yearn Finance (YFI) have "dropped significantly" since May.

"These metrics are simple yet reasonably effective as a high level gauge for mass investor sentiment and can be seen to map reasonably well to trends in price," Glassnode wrote. Put simply, lower transaction demand correlates with lower price.

Indeed, the price of YFI is down 26% in the last month, Uniswap has lost 40% of its value, Aave has fallen 27%, and COMP is off a full 55%, according to data from Nomics.

Most DeFi projects probably aren't too concerned, however. Uniswap transaction volumes are near a baseline established during DeFi Summer, said Glassnode, when interest in Ethereum-based tokens took off in mid-2020. And according to DeFi Pulse, the dollar value of the tokens locked into just those four protocols is more than $30 billion. That's nearly twice the value of all DeFi protocols on January 1.

Prices too are still up year-to-date. UNI tokens, for instance, are worth more than 300% more than they were at the start of the year.


Moreover, assuming liquidity in DeFi lending protocols and exchanges remains high, trading can now commence at much lower fees.

Average Ethereum transaction fees on May 30 stood at $4.82, their lowest rate since January 1; at their height, on May 19, the average fee was $71.72 as DeFi traders, NFT buyers, and others using protocols on the Ethereum blockchain tried to push through transactions on the congested network.

Maybe a few slow weeks isn't so bad.source

XRP
Despite the ongoing decrease, the weekly chart for XRP still looks bullish.

The drop served to validate the long-term $0.66 area as support. The price has been increasing since and could potentially resume its bounce.

Technical indicators are still bullish. The RSI is above 50 and the Stochastic oscillator is still increasing. Therefore, the price action combined with technical indicators suggest that an upward movement is more likely than a breakdown.


Chart By TradingView
The daily chart aligns with this view.

Since its April 14 high, XRP has been trading inside a descending parallel channel. It has been moving upwards since bouncing at the support line of the channel on May 23 (green icon).

Currently, it is in the process of reclaiming the $0.90 horizontal area. If successful, it could increase all the way to $1.46. This is the 0.618 Fib retracement level and the resistance line of the channel. Both are likely to provide resistance.


Chart By TradingView
Highlights
There is long and short-term support at $0.66 and $0.90, respectively.
XRP is trading inside a descending parallel channel.
EOS
Similarly to XRP, EOS has decreased considerably in May. On May 23, it reached a low of $3.57 before bouncing.

While the bounce caused a reclaim of the $5.10 support area, EOS is still trading below the long-term $8 resistance area. Until it breaks out, we cannot consider the trend bullish.

Furthermore, technical indicators are neutral, failing to confirm the direction of the trend. Therefore, EOS could continue consolidating between these two levels, before a decisive movement transpires.


Chart By TradingView
Highlights
There is support and resistance at $5.10 and $8, respectively.
Technical indicators are neutral.
TRX
Unlike EOS and XRP, TRX has been decreasing since April. It created a low high on May 11, before falling once more, this time at an accelerated rate.

The decrease culminated with a low of $0.055, which was reached on May 23.

TRX created a bullish engulfing candlestick the next day and bounced. It is currently in the process of creating a higher low. Technical indicators are showing some bullish signs, but have yet to confirm the bullish trend.


Chart By TradingView
The shorter-term six-hour chart shows a breakout from a descending resistance line. This indicates that an upward movement is likely, at least in the short-term.

There is resistance at $0.112. In order for the longer-term trend to be considered bullish, TRX has to reclaim this level. If it did, it would also likely generate a bullish reversal in daily time-frame indicators.


Chart By TradingView
Highlights
There is support at $0.0625.
TRX has broken out from a short-term descending resistance line.source

Before we delve into Litecoin price predictions for 2021, let’s begin with a look back at each Litecoin forecast we delivered to you in December 2019, June 2020 and December 2020.

In December, Cryptoground’s Litecoin projections suggested that LTC would finish off 2020 with highs of $136.52 – rising to $398.72 by the end of 2025. CryptoInfobase was even more optimistic. It set Litecoin’s future price at $320 for New Year’s Eve in 2020 – and anticipated a dazzling $950 five years later. The most conservative indication of how high will Litecoin go came from DigitalCoinPrice – in its view, LTC could expect to reach $103.44 by the end of this year.

And in June 2020, the main point of concern with LTC price predictions centred on how the world’s fifth-biggest cryptocurrency was struggling to break through the $50 barrier in any meaningful way – and remained a long distance off the highs of $142 seen in June 2019.

Things started to change in late October. In keeping with other cryptocurrencies, Litecoin suddenly embarked on a massive surge – managing to smash through $50. This had long served as a psychological barrier for traders. The bull run was far from over. During November, LTC rose from $55 to $88 – resulting in gains of 60%. LTC reached a 52-week high of $123.76. For several consecutive days after Bitcoin’s journey beyond $20,000 began, Litecoin was even outperforming the world’s biggest cryptocurrency in percentage terms – consistently delivering double-digit gains along with the likes of XRP.

The first few months of 2021 were even more encouraging for LTC. It started to rally, hitting $236 on 19 February, but then it slipped back down to $165 on 28 February.

There was still time and space for Litecoin to grow, though. On 30 March, Litecoin started to be accepted on PayPal. This was the real coming out party for the cryptocurrency. Its value started to rise. It was at $195.73 on 30 March but on 16 April it was $311.95 - an increase of nearly 63% in just under three weeks.

There was a slump shortly after this, with Litecoin dipping to $233.75 on 25 April, but things started to get better again. It broke the $400 barrier on May 10 and, while it dipped slightly to be around $385 on 12 May, it seemed to be fairly stable. That was until the great crypto day crash of 19 May 2021, when its value plummeted by more than 40% to $156.96 in the space of a couple of hours.

But enough about the past – will Litecoin go up any further? Here, we’re going have a look ahead to the rest of 2021 and maybe formulate a Litecoin future prediction.
More information: https://currency.com/amp/litecoin-price-prediction-2021