• Litecoin is one of the highest-owned altcoins in the market, topping the charts at over eight million non-empty wallets, with its longevity playing a big role in its popularity.
• Dogecoin and XRP also topped five million wallets, with Cardano and Shiba Inu the other notable coins, despite the broader market recording a 5% dip, with most major coins in the red.

Litecoin is one of the oldest cryptos in the market and, according to new data by blockchain analysts at Santiment, one of the highest-owned coins.

Santiment shared the data on social media Wednesday, revealing that 8.08 million non-empty wallets hold LTC. The crypto’s longevity plays a big part in its ownership—Litecoin was launched in October 2011 by Charlie Lee, known in social media circles as Satoshi Lite, a former engineer at Google and Coinbase as a ‘lite’ version of Bitcoin, as our detailed explainer breaks down.

Litecoin’s similarity to Bitcoin (its code was literally forked from Bitcoin’s) has been a gift and a curse. On the one hand, it makes it a viable alternative for investors who can’t afford to own BTC due to its high price or wish to diversify their portfolio while sticking to the ethos of the original crypto. It also makes it easy to integrate on rails, wallets, applications and platforms created for Bitcoin.

However, this similarity also means that it’s forever in the shadow of its elder brother. For instance, when smart contracts became the biggest attractions in blockchain networks, Ethereum broke free from the pack and shot up to become the leading altcoin. XRP’s ascent to the top was aided by the rise of blockchain payments, with others like Solana shooting to the top as alternatives to Ethereum with lower fees and faster transactions.

Litecoin has been unable to carve out a niche for itself, however. Regardless, it’s still one of the industry’s pillars, and with a $5 billion market cap, it is the 20th largest crypto in the world.

In the past 24 hours, it dipped 8.3% to trade at $67.5. While its dip was higher than Bitcoin’s 4.4%, it’s in line with the tokens closer to it on the charts, including Polygon, NEAR, Chainlink and Uniswap, which all lost at least 7%.

Despite its recent dip, some analysts believe that it could rebound. One pointed out that LTC has recently broken free of a multi-week falling wedge pattern and expects it to surge by up to 40%, as shown below.

Even John Bollinger is bullish. The mathematician behind the Bollinger Bands, a technical trading tool in stocks and crypto, recently threw his weight behind LTC, noting on social media that it’s “about time for LTC to wake up.”

This bullish thesis is further strengthened by the continued investment in the token by some of the industry’s foremost investors, led by Grayscale. The leading crypto investment firm has racked up 10,000 LTC this week, adding to the 10,000 LTC it picked up last week.

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