Litecoin Ordinals hits new record; what should you expect

• Though hashrate increased, LTC’s mining difficulty registered a decline. 
• LTC’s price increased by over 4% last week, and metrics looked bullish. 

Ordinals’ popularity seems to have been growing at a consistent pace as its metrics kept hitting new records. As per the Litecoin Foundation’s latest tweet, Litecoin [LTC] Ordinals had crossed 3 million inscriptions. Moreover, Litecoin had averaged about a million inscriptions per week in May.

Litecoin Ordinals just hit 3 million inscriptions!

We’ve been averaging about a million per week in the month of May. #LTC20 $LTC #Ordinals #MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/JCpcq18uud

— Litecoin Foundation ⚡️ (@LTCFoundation) May 22, 2023

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

Litecoin mining industry grows

Since the launch of Ordinals, Bitcoin’s [BTC] hashrate rose. The same trend was true for Litecoin too, as evident from the rise in its hashrate over the past few months, standing at 724.338 Thash/s at press time.

However, it was interesting to note that despite the increase in hashrate, LTC’s mining difficulty has declined recently. Moreover, after a short dip, LTC miners’ fees also registered an uptick, as per Glassnode’s charts. 

Source: Bitinfocharts

LTC’s performance on the price front has also been remarkable of late. According to CoinMarketCap, the token’s price increased by 4% in the last seven days. At the time of writing, it was trading at $92.53, with a market capitalization of over $6.7 billion.

Apart from the growth in Ordinals, another major factor driving this pump could be Litecoin’s upcoming halving, which is about to happen in two months. Historically, halving has been followed by price pumps. Therefore, the possibility of a further price hike can’t be ruled out.

Investors are confident in LTC

A look at LTC’s on-chain metrics suggested that positive sentiments around the coin were dominant in the market. LTC’s weighted sentiment spiked lately, which proved the aforementioned point. Additionally, the token’s social dominance was also high, reflecting its popularity in the crypto space. 

Source: Santiment

Realistic or not, here’s LTC market cap in BTC’s terms

On-chain performance looks bullish

A few metrics also backed the possibility of a price hike. For instance, LTC’s whale transaction count remained high. This suggested that LTC was a preferred token of the whales. Its daily active addresses were high. Moreover, LTC’s velocity also spiked, indicating that the token was used in transactions more often within a set time frame.

LTC’s demand in the futures market was also stable, as evident from its green Binance funding rate. 

Source: Santiment