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Litecoin (LTC/USD), the 15th-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has toppled Ethereum (ETH/USD) regarding the number of active addresses. Santiment, a leading analytics firm, disclosed this news through a tweet earlier today, noting that this is the third time LTC has flipped ETH address activity in 2021.
📈 #Litecoin has just flipped #Ethereum in terms of address activity for just the third time this year. We've also discovered that #Litecoin's payment count, which quantifies the number of addresses receiving $LTC, has hit an #ATH. Read our full analysis. https://t.co/kNSwE6307m pic.twitter.com/nOoWi257C4
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) October 13, 2021
Santiment further disclosed that approximately 600,000 people are using LTC daily. The firm remarks that this is a remarkable achievement for a UTXO coin because, unlike Ethereum, it does not have the support of the decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) spaces, which have been booming this year.
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Per Santiment, its UTXO metric counts the number of addresses receiving crypto. In LTC’s case, the number is very close to the number of active addresses. Comparing LTC to Bitcoin (BTC), another UTXO coin, Santiment found that the metrics are correct, in as much as the LTC’s address activity does not come close to BTC’s.
Apart from an increasing number of users that have developed an interest in LTC, the factors behind the coin’s growing address activity remain unknown.
LTC’s price is not congruent with the address activity
Despite the number of active LTC addresses exceeding 575,000, the coin’s price action does not mirror such a milestone. At the time of writing, LTC is changing hands at $174.37 (£127.87) after gaining 2.21% over the past 24 hours.
This price also represents a 3.02% decline in the past seven days, showing that the coin has been trading sideways. Unlike other leading cryptos, which are inching closer to their all-time highs, LTC is still 57.58% down from its May 10 ATH of $412.96 (£302.72).
This news comes after LTC made headlines in the past month after a false announcement of a partnership with Walmart. The publication did rounds online, with even Charlie Lee, the Managing Director of the Litecoin Foundation, tweeting about the partnership.
As a result of the announcement, LTC surged as high as $233.06 (£170.90). However, Walmart issued a statement saying the announcement was not authentic. Upon realizing that the news was fake, Lee also took the tweet down. Consequently, LTC plunged to $171.38 (£125.67) on the same day.