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.
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.
