Crypto Today: Coinbase suspends litecoin and ethereum trading

• Investors gravitate toward alternative digital currencies.
• Bitcoin rises modestly, ether and litecoin skyrocket. 

Following the introduction of bitcoin futures trading by the CBOE on Monday, surging transaction fees and processing times of bitcoin pushed investors to alternative digital currencies on Tuesday. Ethereum and litecoin advanced to fresh all-time highs while bitcoincash added more than 10%.

The LTC/USD (litecoin) pair doubled its price as it rose above the $400 mark after starting the day near the $200 mark and was last trading at $330, up nearly 70% on the day. Meanwhile, the ETH/USD (ether) was gaining more than 30% at $622. However, following today's rally, Coinbase, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchange systems, announced that buy and sell orders in both assets were temporarily disabled. Commenting on litecoin's price action, "the meteoric rise could be associated with the broad-based rally in the cryptocurrency space, though litecoin's accessibility to more user-friendly buying tools, and the general fear of missing out (FOMO) ongoing in developed markets, are perhaps the biggest drivers," Omkar Godbole, FXStreet analyst, wrote in an article for coindesk.com.

The largest digital currency in terms of trading volume, bitcoin, on the other hand, is now at $17600, up 2.66% on the day while XBT (bitcoin futures on CBOE) is losing  1.15% at $18290. The total market capitalization of all digital currencies continued to increase on Tuesday and is now at a touching distance of $500 billion.