As a significant milestone, Litecoin (LTC) became the most used cryptocurrency for payments for the second consecutive month in December, outperforming all major tokens including Bitcoin (BTC).
Data from Glassnode on LTC
According to the world’s largest payment processor BitPay, LTC’s share in global payments increased from 34.52% in November to 38.25% in December. This was also the all-time high (ATH) for Litecoin’s market share. It was clear that LTC took a large portion of Bitcoin’s market share.
More people preferred to purchase goods and services using LTC than the combined total of BTC and Ethereum (ETH). Using data from Glassnode, it was determined that LTC’s transaction count significantly increased in December, breaking all previous records. Daily transactions peaked at 1.27 million on December 20th.
Comparison Between BTC and LTC
In comparison, Bitcoin recorded less than half of this number on the same day. Additionally, the USD value of cryptocurrencies transferred on-chain also saw a significant rise in December. LTC’s transfer volume reached the highest level since July, averaging $2.7 billion throughout the month. Despite impressive on-chain indicators, Litecoin failed to create any upward pressure on its native token. According to CoinMarketCap, the “Digital Silver” lost 11% of its market value last month.
LTC has been trading significantly below its 2023 peak in recent months. Even the halving event failed to impart meaningful momentum to the token, which was ranked 19th by market value at the time of writing. The NVT ratio, which is negatively correlated with Litecoin’s transaction volumes, has been steadily declining over the past few months. This suggests that network usage has outpaced market value growth, historically seen as a bullish signal.
