Data from cryptocurrency analytics firm Santiment suggests cryptocurrency whales have been quietly accumulating Litecoin ($LTC), a cryptocurrency that has been described as the “silver to Bitcoin’s gold,” over the last 15 weeks.

On social media, Santiment shared data showing that whale addresses holding between 10,000 and 1 million LTC have been accumulating the cryptocurrency for 15 weeks, their longest period since 2017, to the point they added 5% of Litecoin’s supply to their holdings.

The accumulation came at a time when the cryptocurrency was seeing historic lows on the LTCBTC pair, dropping to 0.003 BTC before surging around 6% over the last few days. Litecoin’s lows against the flagship cryptocurrency imply whales were accumulating the cryptocurrency while anticipating an upward move against BTC.

LTCBTC Chart via TradingView

Litecoin is notably a major cryptocurrency that is often used as a testnet for the Bitcoin network. Its use of Segregated Witness (SegWit) was last year far above that of BTC, with the flagship cryptocurrency surpassing it over the last few months. SegWit essentially segregates the digital signature – which comprises 65% of the space in a transaction – from the transaction data, to allow block size limits to increase. 

On top of that, Litecoin has been working on implementing the privacy-oriented decentralized protocol MimbleWimble since at least 2019. The Litecoin Foundation’s creative director, Robbie Coleman, has recently stated it’s now in “final code review” to bring optional privacy for LTC.

As CryptoGlobe reported the U.S. National Bank Association, the fifth-largest commercial bank in the U.S., has launched a cryptocurrency custody service aimed at investment managers that includes an LTC solution.

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