Investing.com – Cryptocurrency prices plunged on Tuesday as Litecoin’s payment processor LitePay abruptly terminated its operation just one month after its launch in February.
Bitcoin was trading at $7,859.0 by 12:30AM ET (04:50 GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange, down 7.6% over the previous 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, plunged 12.6% at $462.70 on the Bitfinex exchange.
XRP/USD’s XRP token dived 11.7% to $0.56442 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin was trading 8.8% lower at $144.50.
The Litecoin Foundation, which oversees the development of Litecoin and invests in LitePay, announced on its website on Tuesday that the Litecoin payment processor had terminated its operations. LitePay was due to launch its merchant service on February 26, but in an email to its clients on March 5, it said it was still "checking all perspective merchants" and was holding off on card registrations "due to the negative feedbacks and drastic actions card issuers have towards cryptocurrency companies." The company has not released any update since then.
The foundation said LitePay CEO Kenneth Asare informed the organization days ago that “he has ceased all operations and is preparing to sell the company".
Litecoin founder Charlie Lee issued an apology for their support of the project following the news.
"Like everyone else, we got too excited about something that was too good to be true and we optimistically overlooked many of the warning signs," said Lee on Twitter. "I am sorry for having hyped up this company and vow to do better due diligence in the future."
The Litecoin Foundation made a similar statement on its website:
"We are greatly disheartened that this saga has ended in this way and we apologize for not doing enough due diligence that could have uncovered some of these issues earlier. We are currently working hard to tighten our due diligence practices and ensure that this does not happen again."
"Litecoin was doing perfectly fine before the promise of LitePay and will continue to do so," the foundation added.