Binance Singapore has added litecoin to its platform—and trading is now live.
The price didn’t budge on the announcement—presumably due to the low volumes on the newly built exchange. In fact prices went down. Litecoin has continued on its downward path, as the cryptocurrency, like others, comes back down to earth after the recent bull market. Litecoin at its peak hit $140, but is now trending at somewhere around $87. Despite this, the announcement is part of something bigger.
If the exchange takes off, Litecoin could be bought and sold freely in the 36th largest economy in the world by GDP. That’s significant, not only for Singapore, but for Litecoin. Litecoin is the fourth-ranked cryptocurrency by market cap, and was created by Charlie Lee in 2011—who then famously sold all his holdings. It has traditionally been known as silver to Bitcoin’s gold and is designed to be used for smaller and faster payments–but if it keeps adding itself to more markets, silver could turn into platinum.
Binance Singapore is one of Binance’s fiat-to-crypto exchanges. Its purpose is to unlock the Southeast Asia market. With Litecoin, it has started with just one trading pair, the Singapore Dollar. This means that you can buy litecoin using the Singapore Dollar but not through bitcoin, or the other cryptocurrencies on the platform–which suggests trading volume, at least initially, will be low. More trading pairs are expected to be added soon, according to a tweet by Binance Singapore, which should help to encourage trading of litecoin on the exchange.
The exchange initially kicked off in April, but was officially launched on July 10. The number of new users of the platform has grown 20 percent week on week—with the trading volume rapidly growing.
At the time, Binance CFO Wei Zhou, said, “From a fiat on-ramp perspective, it will be a very exciting launch in terms of allowing people in Singapore to access cryptocurrency from their traditional banking channels.”
Binance has just a handful of exchanges across the world that allow you to buy cryptocurrencies with fiat money, including ones in Jersey and Uganda. It has typically avoided handling fiat money for regulatory reasons. But, it continues to dip its toes in the water. According to BlockInPress, the exchange is trying to build another fiat-to-crypto but this time in Korea.
Few details are known but it’s expected to follow suit and only offer a small number of trading pairs. It is also in early stages and no formal decisions have been made.