By CCN: With the exception of bitcoin, Litecoin is arguably doing more than any other coin for mainstream adoption. Most recently, Litecoin Creator Charlie Lee has inked a partnership with Travala.com, a blockchain-based hotel booking platform. Even though Travala.com is another blockchain company, it’s a play on the travel industry and represents a use case that can serve as a model for future deals. While Expedia has shied away from accepting bitcoin, it could change its tune if Travala.com’s Litecoin payments take off.
Charlie Lee stated in the announcement:
“We are excited to work with Travala.com to make it easier for Litecoin users to #TravelWithLitecoin. Nothing aids mass adoption more than real-world use cases, and the opportunity to use a global currency like Litecoin to travel around the world is a powerful one.”
Excited to work with @travalacom to make it easier to #TravelWithLitecoin! ⚡️✈️ https://t.co/ToxBUGyNBF
— Litecoin Foundation (@LTCFoundation) May 9, 2019
As a result of the deal with Travala.com, travelers can slash 40% of their hotel costs by paying with Litecoin on Travala.com. To kick things off, Travala.com is partnering with the Litecoin Foundation for the upcoming Litecoin Summit, which will unfold during Las Vegas’ Blockchain Week in the fall. Incidentally, the blockchain-based travel startup is also the official partner of the Bitcoin 2019 event. It’s not as though customers paying with crypto have to compromise, either. Travala.com has a portfolio of nearly 600,000 properties spanning hundreds of countries and territories.
Followers of both projects cheered the development on Twitter, including one person waiting to see Charlie Lee tweet about Travala.com.
Litecoin Price Is on Fire
The LTC price is actually trading lower today in the mixed cryptocurrency market. But the fifth-biggest coin has more than doubled its value year-to-date. It’s a reflection of a new-and-improved Litecoin Foundation that is taking control of its destiny even if the project is decentralized.
The Litecoin price has more than doubled year-to-date. | Source: CoinMarketCap
Litecoin’s Amazingly Lower Fees
Charlie Lee has a vision for Litecoin, one that includes a faster and cheaper cryptocurrency vs. bitcoin. He’s managed to do that and in the latest software update kicked things up a notch. The release of Litecoin Core v0.17.1 results in a lower default transaction fee, which users cheered on social media. According to the announcement:
“The default minimum transaction fee -mintxfee has been lowered to 0.0001 LTC/kB after relaxing the minimum relay and dust relay fee rates in prior releases.”
A couple of users were disappointed with the timing of the announcement, which had the unfortunate overlap with the Binance bitcoin hack. Charlie Lee, however, wasn’t deterred, saying:
“Why would we stop working? Why do developers need to time the market with releases?”
From what Lee’s hinted at, there are more Litecoin Foundation partnerships in the pipeline.