Crypto Contrarian: The Market Hates Litecoin, It Shouldn’t (Cryptocurrency:LTC-USD)

Some of the weird investor disconnects that I’ve seen in crypto is the one I’ve present in Litecoin (LTC-USD) over the past 12 months or so. Like many different threat market belongings, crypto buyers can change into emotionally hooked up to sure concepts. This emotional relationship that bulls have with their magic Web monies is equally seen within the bears. We see this evidenced with some who will steadfastly ignore all blockchain-based belongings as investable concepts. However this emotional bearishness in opposition to crypto is not simply restricted to the anti-crypto crowd. Even the crypto market has an illogical emotional downside with sure belongings. A type of belongings is Litecoin. Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin (BTC-USD). It has 4 occasions the circulating provide, quicker block occasions, and less expensive transactions. Whereas it has traditionally spent fairly a little bit of time as a High 5 coin by market cap, it’s at the moment positioned at #20. Given the exercise on the community, I believe it needs to be greater.

Litecoin is a reliable competitor to Bitcoin within the peer-to-peer funds class however to date the crypto funding group has been too saturated with BTC and ETH maximalists for LTC to get a correct bid. On this article, I’ll present how little love there may be for Litecoin within the crypto funding group in addition to how Litecoin is proving itself to be a viable crypto with actual fee utility. We’ll additionally discover valuation metrics that I consider will hammer residence the contrarian alternative we’ve in LTC.

Crypto Traders Hate Litecoin

The crypto funding market has nearly little interest in Litecoin. We will see this gorgeous clearly within the efficiency of Litecoin in opposition to Bitcoin. By way of every crypto bull cycle, Litecoin has did not make new highs when priced in Bitcoin. LTC now finds itself close to all time lows when priced in BTC. One LTC measured in BTC has made decrease highs and decrease lows by means of every crypto cycle going from 0.04 BTC in 2013 to 0.0018 BTC earlier this 12 months. The metric now finds itself at 0.0027 – nonetheless a far cry from the earlier cycle excessive.

We will see signs of this pricing underperformance all through the crypto analysis group. Actual Imaginative and prescient has a crypto portfolio survey the place customers share their views on a curated record of crypto cash. They’ve the choice to vote obese, underweight, impartial, or to not embrace the coin within the portfolio in any respect. Actual Imaginative and prescient’s survey respondents have change into extra bearish LTC over the lifetime of the survey. 20% of survey respondents voted to obese LTC again in October 2021 with simply 40% saying to not embrace LTC within the portfolio. The survey has now produced zero obese votes in 17 of the final 20 weeks and three consecutive weeks with no less than 70% voting to not embrace LTC in any respect:

And it is not simply Actual Imaginative and prescient’s survey respondents who apparently do not see the worth in Litecoin. Crypto analysis agency Messari does not seem to have printed a Litecoin-focused evaluation in nearly 3 years. Even speculators have prevented Litecoin.

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Supply: CoinGlass

Whereas different crypto belongings like Bitcoin have seen surging futures open curiosity over the past a number of weeks, Litecoin’s OI has lagged a lot of the different payments-focused blockchains. The one exception in that desk is Dogecoin, which pulled ahead a lot of its futures open curiosity hypothesis throughout the meme-stock/meme-coin mania over a 12 months in the past.

Litecoin is likely one of the cryptocurrencies one can get publicity to by means of the standard open market by way of Grayscale’s Litecoin Funding Belief (OTCQX:LTCN). Whereas nearly the entire Grayscale funds commerce at a reduction to the Internet Asset Worth, Grayscale’s Litecoin Funding Belief has the third largest destructive premium value arb amongst its total portfolio of single-asset funding funds with a 41% low cost to NAV:

Once I covered Ethereum Classic again in late-August, I confirmed how there’s a relationship between the magnitude of Grayscale’s holdings with the low cost to NAV of the fund. Primarily, the argument I made was that the extra Grayscale holds of a coin’s complete market cap, the larger the NAV low cost usually is within the fund. Curiously, the Litecoin fund was an outlier right here:

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Sources: CoinGlass, premiums as of 9/30 closes. Market Cap calculations from CoinMarketCap knowledge and Grayscale holdings knowledge

Regardless of Grayscale accounting for a bigger share of the overall market capitalization in six different cash, the Litecoin fund trades on the third largest low cost; trailing solely Livepeer and Ethereum Basic. Right here once more, we see the funding group’s disrespect for Litecoin.

Lack of Social Engagement

You are additionally not going to seek out a lot Litecoin curiosity on Twitter. Over the past six months, there has usually been someplace between 500 and 1,500 tweets about Litecoin on any given day.

That is far under the day by day tweet exercise seen in coin communities like Dogecoin, Ripple, and Bitcoin. If you cannot see the purple line for Litecoin above, that is as a result of it barely exists in comparison with the opposite three cash within the chart. In a fast scan of Twitter for Litecoin-specific commentary, loads of the engagement is destructive and infrequently leads to certainly one of Litecoin’s core critiques; Litecoin’s founder Charlie Lee pursuing a profession at Coinbase several years ago.

Crypto Customers Love Litecoin

Regardless of the dearth of funding demand for LTC, Litecoin as a community continues to quietly impress in key community metrics like pockets addresses, hash charge, day by day transactions. As evidenced by this imply hash charge chart under, Litecoin’s community safety made a brand new all time excessive in September:

The extra spectacular metric I see in Litecoin although is the expansion in LTC’s non-zero addresses in contrast with higher capitalized fee friends. Under we are able to see that determine elevated consistent with the expansion in Dogecoin and Ripple throughout 2021:

However 2022 has been all about Litecoin handle development in comparison with the 2 different networks. Along with the expansion in non-zero addresses over the past two years, Litecoin has arguably seen higher decentralization than among the different fee networks if coin possession by high 100 addresses is any indication:

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Supply: BitInfoCharts

Bitcoin, Bitcoin Money, and Dogecoin have all seen development in High 100 Handle focus whereas Litecoin has seen a big discount from almost 42% two years in the past to a little bit underneath 33% now. Regardless of decrease coin value highs when priced in BTC, LTC remains to be discovering utility in transactions. LTC is now getting used to a far bigger diploma than a number of different higher-ranked cryptocurrencies by means of Bitpay:

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Supply: Bitpay

Whereas Litecoin has been the 2nd most utilized blockchain for transactions on Bitpay for a number of months, it’s clearly taking share away from Bitcoin in a sustained multiple-month development.

Valuation Metrics

After we take a look at the day by day transaction depend as a 30-day transferring common, we are able to get a good sense for the way the networks are being utilized. Taking the 30 Day transferring common for LTC and dividing it by BTC’s 30 Day transferring common for transactions tells us Litecoin seems to be choosing up momentum as a fee community.

As a share of Bitcoin’s day by day transactions, Litecoin’s utilization has grown from 5-10% throughout the years previous the 2017 crypto bubble to over 40% now. One of many different methods one can look to worth these crypto networks is with a metric credited to Bitcoin analyst Willy Woo. The metric is NVT Ratio or Community Worth to Transactions. The best way it is calculated is by dividing the market capitalization by the day by day USD-denominated transaction quantity.

At a 46.2 NVT, not solely has Litecoin been significantly cheaper than Dogecoin and Bitcoin Money for years, nevertheless it’s cheaper than Bitcoin going again to September.

Dangers

Like all cryptos, there may be appreciable threat when investing in Litecoin. Given Ethereum’s profitable transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, I believe there will probably be added strain on the remaining PoW chains to do the identical. That might threat centralizing these public blockchains to a far higher diploma ought to the chain builders buckle underneath the strain and flip to PoS.

Abstract

I firmly consider the crypto funding market is getting it fully improper concerning Litecoin. LTC is likely one of the most utilized payment-focused blockchains for peer-to-peer transactions. Like Bitcoin, the hash charge for Litecoin continues to develop. The pockets addresses with non-zero balances have grown. And the focus of high holders of LTC has really declined over the past two years whereas notable fee friends have seen will increase in focus. Litecoin has change into a helpful peer-to-peer fee community with good decentralization. But, the market nonetheless disrespects it for some cause. We will see that disrespect by means of the dearth of protection of the coin and thru the egregious low cost to NAV in Grayscale’s fund. The market hates Litecoin. But it surely should not.

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