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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.