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Litecoin Whales Are Back In The Game, Can Price Reach $100?

Litecoin (LTC) whales are making their way back into the market once more as the bull market establishes itself. A number of large transactions have been flagged which suggests that these millionaire accounts are coming out to play.

Litecoin On-Chain And Whale Activity Hit 4-Month High

The Litecoin on-chain and whale activity has been on the rise recently, as reported by the on-chain analytics platform Santiment. In the report posted to X (formerly Twitter), Santiment revealed that there had been a big spike in the Litecoin on-chain activity.

The chart shared by the tracker showed the spike taking place in line with the price recovery, which would be the reason why investors are awakening once more. Santiment noted that this recovery in on-chain activity saw address activity on the blockchain, as well as whale activity reaching levels not seen since June, representing a 4-month high in this metric.

Litecoin whales

A total of 319,000 daily addresses were active on the network after this metric dropped drastically in the last few months Additionally, weekly whale transactions, that is transactions carrying more than $100,000 rose and touched a new 4-month high of 7,418.

These are not the only metrics that saw a spike as the dormant LTC address started seeing movement again. These addresses which had previously not seen movement for a while began to move coins around, adding to the current number of coins in circulation.

LTC Ready For A Shoot To $100?

The revival of on-chain activity for Litecoin is a welcome development for the network but it is not exactly bullish. The reason for this is how the LTC price has reacted since this activity commenced, which is not very encouraging.

As the dormant LTC started to move once more, the price began to decline. This suggests that this subset of holders may be selling their coins after holding and waiting for better prices. In this case, the selling pressure has outweighed the demand for the coin.

A continuation of this will likely see the price continue to fall further, and a recovery to $100 is still far off on the horizon. So this recent bout of activity may just be investors choosing to sell rather than coming back to participate in buying.

The LTC price already fell from its $69 level on Thursday to as low as $67 on Friday before mounting a small recovery. Presently, the Litecoin price is sitting at $67.8, representing a 2.14% decrease in the last day.

Litecoin price chart from Tradingview.com

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Only 1,032 Addresses Control Over 60% Of All Litecoin (LTC) In Circulation

1,032 addresses control over 51.2 million Litecoin (LTC) in circulation, on-chain data from BitInfoCharts on May 15.

Litecoin Under Siege?

Records from the “Top 100 Litecoin Rich List” show that 7,355,585 LTC in circulation worth $639,814,097 are controlled by 8.78% of all registered addresses. At the same time, 26,526,499 LTC worth over $2.3 billion is managed by 111 addresses, while 17,993,930 LTC exceeding $1.5 billion are held by 918 addresses.

As of May 15, there were 72,924,127 LTC in circulation. So this concentration alone means over 60% of all LTC in circulation are controlled by 1,032 addresses. Furthermore, the network will only dispense 84,000 LTC to miners as block rewards. 

Litecoin is a proof-of-work network like Bitcoin. It relies on a community of special nodes called miners to validate on-chain transactions and add them to the longest chain. For their participation, the lucky miner is rewarded 12.5 LTC per block every 2.5 minutes.

Litecoin Price On May 15| Source: LTCUSDT On Binance, TradingView

Based on the above statistics, what’s notable is that the $2.3 billion of LTC at spot rates owned by 111 addresses represents the biggest concentration compared to any other range by address count.

To illustrate, 794,934 addresses holding between 0.01 and 0.1 LTC cumulatively own 29,508 LTC. With 794,934 addresses in this range, they are the highest number of LTC owners by wallet address count. 

However, considering their total holdings, these addresses are a minority since whales currently hold over 60% of the total circulating supply. Specifically, there are three whales with over 2 million LTC as of writing on May 15.

The largest LTC whale holds 2,504,667 LTC worth over $217 million. This address is active and constantly accumulates. Of note, the largest LTC whales began accumulating within the last five years from 2018. 

According to on-chain data by BitInfoCharts, the last time this address deposited LTC was on May 10, 2023. Meanwhile, the last withdrawal was in early January 2023.

For instance, the second largest LTC whale, with over 2.47 million coins, started depositing coins in mid-June 2022. He withdrew a portion of LTC on February 10, 2023.

Based on the frequency of deposits and withdrawals, it is also highly likely that these addresses don’t belong to centralized crypto exchanges like Binance or Coinbase.

Will LTC Rally Ahead of Halving?

Crypto whales controlling a disproportionately large amount of coins can manipulate prices and influence trends. Still, whether this will change ahead of the Litecoin halving event is yet to be seen. The Litecoin network will slash miner rewards by half to 6.25 LTC in less than three months.

Based on historical performances, halving events, even in Litecoin, tend to support price increases. Therefore, ahead of this event estimated to be in early August 2023, LTC prices might recover as the coin becomes scarcer.

LTC prices are up 15% from May 2023 lows, changing hands at $86, according to TradingView data.

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Litecoin Whale Transactions Set New 2023 High, Bullish Signal?

On-chain data shows Litecoin whale transactions have jumped to new highs for 2023 recently. Here’s how this may impact the crypto’s price.

Litecoin Transactions Valued Higher Than $1 Million Have Surged

According to data from the on-chain analytics firm Santiment, the last two spikes led to significant rises in the price. The relevant indicator here is the “whale transaction count,” which measures the total number of Litecoin transactions taking place on the blockchain that involve coins worth at least $1 million.

When the value of this metric is high, it means there are a large number of whale transactions happening on the network right now. Such a trend suggests these humongous holders are actively trading currently.

As the volume of coins involved in transfers like these is very sizeable, a high amount of whale transactions can sometimes cause noticeable effects on the market. Thus, whenever the indicator’s value is high, LTC is likely to see more volatility than usual.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the Litecoin whale transaction counts over the last few months:

Litecoin Whale Transactions

As displayed in the above graph, the Litecoin whale transaction count has recently spiked and hit the highest values observed since December 28. This would suggest that whales have become active again.

In the chart, Santiment has also marked the trends that the price of LTC followed the last couple of times this cohort showed elevated activity. It looks like the most recent instance was last month when LTC’s price was observing some high volatility.

Following these large number of whale transactions, Litecoin soon formed a local bottom and went on to rally around 33%. Another instance of this trend was during the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX, where once again high values of the metric accompanied significant volatility in the value of LTC. After this instance as well, the crypto enjoyed some sharp uptrend as the price rose to 37% over the next few weeks.

Since the Litecoin whales are active right now, the crypto could soon witness similarly high volatility. Though, which way this volatility may ultimately take the coin’s price is uncertain, as while these whales could be buying right now (which would be bullish), they could just as well be selling with these transactions (naturally a bearish factor).

However, if the last two occurrences of this pattern are anything to go by, Litecoin might just go on to see runs similar to those that followed these previous instances.

In some other news, the LTC mining hashrate (a measure of the total amount of computing power connected by the miners to the network) hit a new all-time high earlier today, which may also prove to be constructive for the price.

LTC Price

At the time of writing, Litecoin is trading around $89, up 11% in the last week.

Litecoin Price Chart

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Litecoin Bullish Signal: Shark And Whale Addresses Hit 2-Year High

On-chain data shows the combined Litecoin address count of sharks and whales is now at a 2-year high, a signal that could be bullish for the asset’s value.

Litecoin Addresses Holding More Than 1,000 LTC Now At Highest Level Since 2020

As per data from the on-chain analytics firm Santiment, LTC has been climbing strongly since the population of these large addresses began to rise. The relevant indicator here is the “Litecoin Supply Distribution,” which tells us how many addresses (or holders) belong to each wallet group in the market currently.

Addresses are put into these wallet groups based on the total number of coins that they are currently holding. For example, the 1-10 coins band includes all addresses that are holding between 1 and 10 LTC right now. The Supply Distribution metric for this band would then measure the total amount of such addresses that are there in the market currently.

Now, the wallet groups of interest in the current discussion are those with at least 1,000 LTC. Since there is no upper bound here, all balances ranging from this amount to infinity are stacked together. Here is the Supply Distribution chart for these Litecoin address bands:

Litecoin Sharks And Whales

As the above graph displays, the value of the indicator for Litecoin addresses falling inside this range has been rising since May of this year. Holders that have 1,000 or more coins in their wallets are sharks and whales, so this uptrend implies that the total number of these large investors has been going up in the last few months.

Just recently, the address count of these holders hit a value of 4,232, which is the highest value recorded in more than two years. From the chart, it’s also visible that while these sharks and whales have been increasing in number (and hence accumulation has been going on), the LTCBTC ratio has seen a rise of more than 130%.

Since this accumulation hasn’t seemed to have slowed down recently, it’s possible that it could sustain further appreciation in the price of Litecoin heading into 2023. LTC’s next halving, an event where its supply production would be cut in half, is also scheduled to take place in the August of next year and has historically had a bullish effect on the price as well.

LTC Price

At the time of writing, Litecoin’s price floats around $67, up 4% in the last week.

Litecoin Price Chart

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Litecoin Whale Withdraws $65.5M In LTC From Binance, Bullish Sign?

Data shows a Litecoin whale has withdrawn $65.5 million in LTC from the crypto exchange Binance, a sign that may prove to be bullish for the price of the coin.

A Litecoin Whale Has Taken Out 835.8k LTC From Binance

As per data from the crypto transaction tracker service Whale Alert, two large LTC transfers have been spotted on the chain during the past day.

The first of these Litecoin transactions involved the movement of 73,794 LTC, worth just under $5.8 million at the time of the transfer.

Massive transfers like these usually belong to a single whale, or an entity made up of multiple investors. Depending on the intent behind them, such transactions may have noticeable impacts on the market.

Here are some additional details about the transfer that might shed some light on why it was made:

Litecoin Whale

Looks like the sender had to pay a negligible fee of 0.00004518 LTC for the coins to go through | Source: Whale Alert

As you can see above, the sending address in this case was attached to a wallet associated with the crypto exchange Binance, while the receiver was an unknown address.

Unknown addresses like these are usually personal wallets, and are unaffiliated with any known centralized platform.

The second Litecoin transaction saw a whopping 762,073 LTC move on the chain, equivalent to $59.8 million according to the exchange rate at the time of the transfer.

Below are the details regarding this transaction.

Litecoin Exchange Outflow

This massive transfer seems to have taken only $0.02 in fees to be possible | Source: Whale Alert

It looks like this transaction also went from the crypto exchange Binance to an unknown wallet, much like the other transfer.

In fact, both these transactions involved the same sending and receiving addresses, implying the same whale might be behind both of these.

Transfers where coins exit the centralized custody of exchanges are called “exchange outflows.” Usually, investors withdraw their coins from these platforms for accumulation purposes.

Hence, large outflows like the ones observed during the past day can be a sign that whales are accumulating, and can therefore be bullish for the price of Litecoin.

LTC Price

At the time of writing, Litecoin’s price floats around $77.5, down 1% in the last week. Over the past month, the crypto has gained 37% in value.

The below chart displays the trend in the price of the coin over the last five days.

Litecoin Price Chart

LTC has been climbing up during the last couple of days after the plunge to $70 | Source: LTCUSD on TradingView
Featured image from James Lee on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CryptoQuant.com