“The accumulation of whales and sharks matters more than retail sentiment,” Santiment says.
LitVM is a second layer of Litecoin compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
While retail traders divert their attention from Litecoin (LTC) due to their lethargy in the market, big capital executes a strategic move in the opposite direction.
The number of addresses belonging to sharks and whales in the network – those that guard a minimum of 10,000 LTC – registered a net increase of 7% during the last five months ending June 12, 2026.
The largest holders of Litecoin have been “quietly increasing their positions even as the price action remains uninspiring,” indicates the signature of Santiment analysis.
Specifically, addresses holding at least 10,000 LTC added 42 new wallets to the network in that period. With this increase, The final count was located in 648 wallets with high concentration of capitalas can be seen in the graph.
The interest of these investors coincides with the advances of LitVM, the first layer 2 solution compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) built on Litecoin.
A layer 2 is a secondary network that processes transactions outside the base network to reduce costs and increase speed, while maintaining the security of the original network, as explained by Criptopedia, the educational section of CriptoNoticias.
“Much of the current attention in Litecoin is focused on LitVM, a project that brings smart contract functionality to the Litecoin ecosystem through its zkLTC wrapper,” explain Santiment analysts. Smart contracts are computer programs that run automatically when pre-established conditions are met, without the need for intermediaries.
This innovation transforms Litecoin from a network designed exclusively for fast and cheap payments to a programmable ecosystem. Thanks to this, the network is capable of running decentralized finance (DeFi) applicationstokenization of real-world assets (RWA) and integrations with Artificial Intelligence.
Technical behavior crashes against accumulation
“The debate has ignited renewed interest on social media as traders evaluate whether the platform can create significant utility and demand for LTC,” Santiment notes.
Historically, sustained accumulation by sharks and whales “tends to matter more than short-term retail sentiment, because these participants often position themselves well before larger trends become obvious to the broader market.”
On the one hand, the optimism of big capital is based on the technical development of layer 2. On the other hand, market data show an immediate bearish reality that questions that enthusiasm.
Between December 2025 and May 2026, the price of LTC fell from a range of $80 to $90 to a lateral channel between $50 and $60, breaking down to $45.
Likewise, the volume of transactions in dollars gradually contracted until reaching its lowest levels of the year, standing at 6,000 million dollars, as can be seen in the first graph. In this regard, Santiment points out that the volume of LTC transactions is at annual lows, although it adds a projection that suggests that the trend could be reversed soon.
The strategic movement of wholesale wallets suggests that Litecoin’s fundamental value could be becoming independent of its current price. “With any rebound, this support from key players would likely bring the retailer back and quickly strengthen its declining transaction volume,” comments Santiment, outlining this technological change as the support for an eventual market recovery.