Decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency Litecoin is beginning to show its potential to be an underdog compared with the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Records Congestion
According to data on the aggregator platform Mempool, Bitcoin is seeing an increase in unconfirmed transactions, now numbering over 300,000.
Bitcoin congestion can be heavily attributed to the rising Ordinal NFT frenzy. In January 2023, Casey Rodarmor created the Bitcoin Ordinal, enabling non-fungible tokens to be deployed on the Bitcoin network. The concept surrounds permanently inscribing digital satoshi with texts, images, videos, and more on Bitcoin-enabled wallets. The idea was quickly adopted by major market players like Yuga Labs, Magic Eden, DeGods, and many more.
Also contributing to the rising engagement with the Bitcoin blockchain is BTC’s price increase in the year-to-date (YTD) timeframe. The asset has seen around a 70% YTD increase. After rising to as high as $30,000, 1 BTC currently trades for $27,000.
These factors, among others, have given rise to the congestion that plagues the largest blockchain network by user base. Such traffic also leads to an increase in transaction fees.
Litecoin Gains Massively from Bitcoin’s Congestion
Since its creation in 2011, Litecoin has seen a relatively low number of daily transactions. However, the network, a hard fork of Bitcoin, is now benefiting from Bitcoin’s congestion as its transaction rate is now at new highs.
Source: BitInfoCharts
As shown in the chart above, Litecoin began seeing its uptrend at the start of May. At that time, it jumped from 98,000 transactions to 142,000 transactions within just two days. Current data reveals that a new all-time high of over 584,000 transactions has been recorded on the Litecoin network.
Still, the Litecoin network’s increased involvement had little impact on the native asset for the blockchain, LTC. After reaching $70 in January, the highest price the cryptocurrency has seen is $100, which occurred in February and April. Currently, LTC trades at $79.
