Assessing why LTC whales stood on thin ice despite Litecoin’s 2022 performance

• Litecoin processed 39 million transactions in 2022
• It saw over 50 million unique wallet addresses, however at press time, LTC lost more than half of its value  

Litecoin [LTC], the decentralized, open-source cryptocurrency network closed the 2022 trading year with over 39 million transactions completed on it.

Despite the general downtrend that marked the last trading year, Litecoin recorded a few milestones on and off chain. In addition to a jump in the count of transactions processed on the network, the number of unique addresses on Litecoin in 2022 totaled 52 million.

Furthermore, the Litecoin Foundation released its 2022 recap via a blog post. The non-profit organization founded to advance Litecoin noted that the address count was the “second most of any cryptocurrency” in 2022.

Read Litecoin’s [LTC] Price Prediction 2023-24

It added,

“This isn’t the only marker of increased use and adoption, but an example of the ever-increasing expansion of the Litecoin ecosystem.”

Further, during the year, Litecoin’s hashrate registered a new all-time high of 613.81TH/s. Additionally, the network’s average difficulty clinched an all-time high on 3 December in the 11 years of the network’s operation.

No whales to save LTC

Not spared from the severe market decline in the last year, LTC’s value dropped by 54%, data from

For context, at the beginning of 2022, the altcoin traded per piece at $151. As the bear market intensified, it exchanged hands for as low as $43 in June. After marking that year’s low, it rebounded gradually to end the trading year at $68.

In addition to an overall decline in growth in 2022, on-chain data revealed that key LTC whale addresses gradually distributed their tokens within the 12-month period.

For example, when Terra-Luna collapsed in May, the count of LTC whale addresses that held 10,000 to 1,000,000 LTC tokens fell sharply by 6% between 24 and 25 May.

The count rebounded temporarily at the beginning of June but soon fell as positive conviction exited the market gradually in the second half of the year.

Between January and December 2022, the count of this cohort of LTC holders went down by  6%, data from Santiment showed.

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Conversely, sharks that held 1 to 10,000 LTC tokens intensified accumulation. However, this was not enough to drive up the asset’s value amid lingering overall market decline. 

Source: Santiment

On the developmental front, Litecoin completed the implementation of its MimbleWimble upgrade on 19 May 2022. The upgrade was executed to enhance the user experience by providing users the option to make confidential transactions on the Litecoin Network.

After the deployment of this upgrade and its several updates during the year, development activity on Litecoin plummeted significantly. This was because it touched 0 a few times. It ended the year at 0.21, per data from Santiment. 

Source: Santiment

With Litecoin’s several partnerships expected to bear fruits in the new year and the scheduled halving in August 2023, LTC might be due for a rally.