How Litecoin emerged as the popular crypto for payments

• LTC’s share of global payments jumped from 23% in March to a little over 34% by the end of July.
• LTC shed 30% of its value since the beginning of the month.

Litecoin [LTC] was one of the most preferred cryptocurrencies for payments as tracked by the world’s largest crypto payment processor BitPay. LTC’s share of the global payments jumped from 23% in March to a little over 34% by the end of July, representing a nearly 50% jump.

Source: BitPay

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In fact, not so long ago in June, the “Digital Silver” flipped the “Digital Gold” Bitcoin [BTC] to grab the numero uno spot for the first time in history. However, LTC’s growth trajectory has since plateaued, and it ceded the first position to BTC.

Litecoin’s summer of growth

Much of the growth was powered by the parabolic rise in transactions in the May-June period. According to Glassnode, LTC’s transactions count reached levels comparable to Bitcoin’s daily tally on several occasions during this phase.

Source: Glassnode

It should be recalled that demand for Litecoin swelled after exasperated users sought cheaper alternatives when transaction fees on Bitcoin were touching the skies.

LTC’s charts still in the red

The month of August, which saw the all-important halving in Litecoin’s block rewards, hasn’t panned out the way most of the token’s fanbase would have liked. LTC was hit hard by two successive bearish phases.

Initially, the excitement over Litecoin’s scarcity dampened as the token plunged 10% within days of halving. The bigger decline came during the Bitcoin-led market bloodbath, when the token tanked 24%, as shown by CoinMarketCap.  Overall, LTC shed 30% of its value since the beginning of the month.

Source: CoinMarketCap

Whales began to accumulate

Sensing the impending price drop, Litecoin whales liquidated their holdings just in time. However, as the market began to move sideways, these big investors began to add to their stacks.

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How much are 1,10,100 LTCs worth today?

As per data from Santiment, addresses storing between 1,000-10,0000 tokens increased sharply over the past week. The cohort holding between 10,000-100,000 LTCs exhibited a similar behavior. This indicated that whales were optimistic of a bull run in near future.

Source: Santiment

However, sentiment around Litecoin continued to be pessimistic. The weighted sentiment, which is a measurement of commentary around the asset, trended in the negative territory.

Source: Santiment