In terms of price, Litecoin (LTC) has had a pretty tough year and currently the altcoin has dropped 51% in the last twelve months. The lack of activity in GitHub and the planned protocol updates have led Litecoin co-founder Charlie Lee to admit that 2019 experienced an all-time low in the number of developers working on Litecoin Core, the software behind the network nodes.

The beginning of 2020 was no different, and Bitcoin Investor called for voluntary donations from LTC miners to help boost development funding. Uncertainties regarding Litecoin’s future have caused investors to lose interest in the project and this is reflected in both the chain and LTC’s business metrics.

Interestingly, while most would consider the lack of investor interest as a negative factor, some have been quietly building up LTC.

Litecoin’s founder, Charlie Lee, talks about the rumors of abandonment

Litecoin’s trading volume falls to a minimum of 2 years
Volume is the most relevant indicator of traders‘ interest and Litecoin has failed miserably in this area. The volume traded on the major exchanges has been trending downward over the past twelve months and has recently fallen to its lowest level in two years.

Litecoin ranks third in Nomic’s transparent trading volume at USD 80 million per day. This is 50% above Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and EOS, but the figure remains 45% below the previous eleven months when there was a daily average of $146 million in volume.

A number of reasons could be behind the dramatic change and it should be noted that even lower activity on exchanges does not necessarily translate into lower blockchain usage, that has been the case.

On-chain metrics provide realistic information on transfers, fees, active addresses and many useful indicators that will be of interest to traders.

Adjusted transfer value

The transfer value is a leading indicator in the chain measuring user activity as it adds up all the currencies that are moved daily. CoinMetrics analysis provides more accurate data by adjusting these figures to exclude mixers and transactions between the same entities.

Litecoin’s creator proposes that miners voluntarily donate 1% for development
Litecoin daily adjusted transfer sum 14-day average

Adjusted daily transfers have hovered around USD 20 million, 83% below the 2019 peak. The current level is comparable to Tezos (XTZ), a much newer and smaller crypto currency whose main use case has nothing to do with fast or cheap transactions.