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Litecoin(LTC), a nine-year-old cryptocurrency whose price returns have chronically underperformed the bigger and better-knownbitcoinin recent years, is hitching its wagon to a new star: privacy.

The blockchain industry subsector of privacy coins cryptocurrencies with embedded technology that shields identifying information from public view is becoming one of this years hottest buys. One of the biggest privacy coins,zcash(ZEC), which offers shielded transaction capabilities, has nearly tripled so far in 2020, whilemonero(XMR), which uses a technique called ring signatures to obscure sender and receiver data, has doubled.

Litecoin founder Charlie Lee told CoinDesk in an interview the project is now looking to adopt key privacy-enhancing features, which he sees as increasingly attractive to cryptocurrency users. The enhancements are already being tested, and an upgrade to the main network is scheduled for next year.If the effort succeeds, it might inject ajolt of enthusiasminto a project that has suffered from a lack of momentumin digital-asset markets. Litecoin is up 21% this year after a 38% gain in 2019, which pales in comparison to bitcoins 59% year-to-date gain and a 94% increase last year.

I want to make it so that users dont have to worry about giving up their financial privacy by using litecoin, Lee said. Even if youre not doing anything illegal, you dont want people to know how much money you have or what your paycheck is. Daniel CawreyRead More:In Effort to Differentiate, Litecoin Makes a Move to Privacy

Litecoin vs. bitcoin since start of 2019.

Bitcoin Watch

Bitcoin daily chart.

Bitcoin is hovering near $11,400 at press time, having snapped a six-day winning trend with a 1% drop on Tuesday.

Notably, the cryptocurrency formed an inside day candle on Tuesday, aborting the immediate bullish technical outlook. Inside day candle occurs when the cryptocurrency trades well within the preceding days high and low and indicates consolidation.

As such, Tuesdays high of $11,567 is now the level to beat for the bulls. A break above that level would signal a continuation of the recent rally and open the doors for resistances above $12,000.

Alternatively, acceptance under Tuesdays low of $11,314 would imply a bearish reversal and could yield deeper declines.

That said, the on-chain metrics favor a continued rally. The seven-day average of bitcoins hashrate or measure of the processing power dedicated to the blockchain rose to a record high of 144.29 exa hashes per second(quintillion hashes per second)on Tuesday, surpassing the previous peak of 143.19 EH/s observed on Sept. 18, according to data source Glassnode.

It indicates high miner confidence in the cryptocurrencys price prospects. Miners largely operate on cash and liquidate their BTC holdings to fund operations. As such, they are likely to dedicate more resources to the computer-intensive mining process if they are bullish on price.

Token Watch

Bitcoin (BTC):Giant money manager Fidelity pitches bitcoin asalternative investment.

Ether (ETH):Ethereums network upgrade (Eth 2.0) isexpected soonand could address scaling issues associated with its legacy platform.

What's Hot

JPMorgan calls Squares $50M bitcoin investment strong vote of confidence for the cryptocurrency (CoinDesk)

Bank of Russia seeks limit on amount of digital assets retail investors can buy (CoinDesk)

Blockchain could give $1.7T boost to global economy by 2030, PwC report says (CoinDesk)

New cVIX index tracks crypto market volatility (CoinDesk)

The saga of Blue Kirby shows DeFiers are a trusting lot, until theyre not (CoinDesk)

Coinbase chief compliance officer departs amid as CEOs apolitical stanceproves political (CoinDesk)

Nasdaq-listed Marathon Patent teams with Beowulf Energy to co-locate bitcoin mining facility in Montana (CoinDesk)

Lesson of third quarter is that crypto is still a retail dominated industry, The TIEs Joshua Frank writes (eToro/The TIE)

BitMEX charges show that days are gone when innovators could take a lackadaisical approach to regulatory and legal compliance (Arca)

Coin Metrics analysis maps BitMEX execs Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed to their respective withdrawal keys (Coin Metrics):

Chart showing which founder keys were used to authorize BitMEX withdrawals. At least three keys must be used on any given day to authorize withdrawals. Founder Key A is presumed to belong to Reed held Founder Key A, since he was arrested on Oct. 1. Key B is presumed to belong to Delo and C to Hayes.

Analogs

The latest on the economy and traditional finance

IMFs Tobias Adrian sees risk of sharp adjustment in asset prices or periodic bouts of volatility (IMF)

BlackRocks Larry Fink sees futurewithjust 50% of workers in offices (Bloomberg)

Argentine president says government has no intention of devaluing countrys currency (Bloomberg)

Chinese tech hub Shenzhen toyswith digital yuan pilot program (SCMP)

Interest rate cuts in U.S. and elsewhere have China buying hitherto unattractivegovernment bonds from Japan(CNBC)

Environmental, social and governance concerns could take toll onstock valuations, ValueActs Jeffrey Ubben says (Reuters)

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First Mover: Privacy Is Litecoin's Ace in the Hole as JPMorgan Touts Bitcoin - CoinDesk - CoinDesk