The crypto market surged to a collective market cap of over $830 billion, a rare sight amidst a gloom-ridden sentiment induced by FTX’s collapse and the subsequent turn of events. Nevertheless, Litecoin’s comeback fared better than most top altcoins.
At a market cap of over $5.64 billion, the “digital silver” climbed to a high of $81 on November 23rd. The last time it was trading along this level was back in May, thereby recording a six-month high.
Leading up to the first major price jump, a strong accumulation trend was persistent among “sharks,” amassing to a seven-month high supply held. This cohort of addresses holding 1k to 100k LTC tokens has piled up more than $43 million over the past two weeks, as revealed by prominent crypto analytic platform, Santiment, which tweeted,
A bigger cohort of LTC whales – holding one million to 10 million LTC tokens – have also demonstrated a similar trend, increasing their bags from 2.7 million. This further catalyzed the price action of the crypto-asset.
At the beginning of the year, Litecoin was trading near $150. However, subsequent bearishness in the market prompted the crypto-asset to fall as low as $42 in June. Despite the recovery, it remained stuck below $55 for the most part before breaking above the level twice in November alone.
Interestingly, Litecoin clocked in its first bullish after former Ripple partner and p2p payment firm MoneyGram announced the launch of a new service to buy, trade, and store the crypto-asset earlier this month.
The divergence from the market-wide slump comes eight months before the much-anticipated halving event that will slash Litecoin’s pace of supply expansion by 50%. Following the third mining reward halving, slated for August 2023, rewards paid to LTC miners for recording transactions on the blockchain will be cut from the current 12.5 LTC per block to 6.25 LTC per block.
It is worth noting Litecoin’s transition from a bearish to a bullish narrative in the months leading up to its two previous halving cycles in 2015 and 2019.