What’s The Point In #PayWithLitecoin

#PayWithLitecoin is a social movement established by the Litecoin Foundation. In essence, #PayWithLitecoin wants to help the general public discover Litecoin as a viable payment option and, more importantly, wants to inspire merchants in brick and mortar stores to start accepting Litecoin as a currency. It’s still in its infancy, yet even so #PayWithLitecoin is a movement that is sweeping across the world, bringing with it good news about Litecoin and more options for Litecoin adoption than ever. #PayWithLitecoin, being a hashtag makes it especially popular for use on Twitter and indeed, that’s exactly why #PayWithLitecoin came about, to spread a message about Litecoin virally, to uses of Twitter and people that tend to engage with hashtags, millenials and young people with a drive for innovation. It seems that Litecoin have recognised a huge target market within this sort of audience, it’s worked, #PayWithLitecoin appears in new tweets daily and triggers many interesting discussion points across social media. What is the point in #PayWithLitecoin? #PayWithLitecoin is a vehicle for social change, designed to bring Litecoin to the fore and to the attention of merchants, customers and crypto traders alike. It’s the essence of cryptocurrency adoption and really is giving Litecoin a good chance of becoming well adopted in the future. Indeed, #PayWithLitecoin has already inspired some great listings and has given Litecoin hundreds of new use values. The Litecoin website alone already lists tonnes of venues at which you can spend Litecoin and includes some of the more prolific examples of venues accepting Litecoin payments, such as CheapAir. Why is #PayWithLitecoin succesful? The main reason for the success of #PayWithLitecoin isn’t the movement itself, instead, the main reason many venues are exploring Litecoin, is simply because it’s so easy for merchants to accept Litecoin, in fact, it’s just as easy to spend it too. The success of #PayWithLitecoin is down to the simple nature of Litecoin itself, a cryptocurrency that was originally designed to speed up and simplify Bitcoin. According to the Litecoin website:

“By maintaining full compatibility with the Bitcoin API, Litecoin is very easy to integrate into existing applications that already offer Bitcoin support. One of the main advantages offered by the Litecoin network is faster transaction confirmation, making it ideal for small-size purchases. If you are a developer using Bitcoin, it is extremely easy to enable support for Litecoin transactions. If you are a merchant, you can easily integrate Litecoin into your web site or application using existing 3rd party shopping cart plugins.”

Litecoin is easy to buy, handle and spend, therefore #PayWithLitecoin was already going to be a success. We have to ask, is #PayWithLitecoin fair? Of course, we can’t forget that #PayWithLitecoin is nothing more than a marketing technique employed by the Litecoin Foundation to market and make Litecoin more attractive. We have to ask if this is fair because it’s actually masquerading as an organic sentiment and not as an advertisement. What I mean by this is that #PayWithLitecoin looks like something that has been developed by a community organically, a community that do believe paying with Litecoin is the future. It’s as if the general public are doing Litecoin a favour. In reality though, it’s just an advertisement, one that has been initiated and facilitated by the Litecoin Foundation. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it could be considered as deceitful to those who consider advertising to be a threat. Remember, back in May, #PayWithLitecoin inspired around 137,000 new companies to start accepting Litecoin, something that can only help bolster the value of Litecoin and benefit the company. This was encouraged through a partnership between Aliant and iPayment, working alongside the Litecoin network. As a matter of fact, we covered the story, during which, Robert Johnson states:

“The integration of Aliant, into the iPayment system now means that all of iPayment’s customers will have the option to start accepting Bitcoin and Litecoin payments. Moreover, in choosing to do so, the businesses at hand will have very little to change. It seems that within this, Aliant will provide all equipment needed to accept such payments and the facilitation of the payments will be carried out between iPayment and Aliant. Essentially, this is going to provide 137,000 businesses with a brand new, win-win situation. Moreover, the organic marketing potential of #PaywithLitecoin will ensure that these businesses receive a decent amount of online attention, should they choose to add Bitcoin and Litecoin to their payment options.”

So finally, what is the point in #PayWithLitecoin? The point, is to act as a vehicle for social change. To make cryptocurrency payments more accessible and to inspire more merchants to jump on the crypto train. As a part of this, another motive exists within the Litecoin Foundation and that is to protect their asset and to protect their business model, making it a more adoptable cryptocurrency for the future. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is worth thinking about. Next time you #PayWithLitecoin, remember that you’re encouraging other to do the same.