Litecoin Surges to Five-Month High Amid ETF Rumors
Litecoin surged to a five-month high of $128.40 Tuesday morning, amid rumors of ETF approval and significant corporate treasury investment. LTC has since pulled back, but is up 5.8% to $123.60 in the past 24 hours and 12.3% in the past week, according to data from CoinGecko—and is up over 41% this month, giving it an overall market cap of $9.4 billion.
The odds of a Litecoin ETF being approved in 2025 currently sit at 80%, according to decentralized prediction platform Polymarket. However, on prediction market Myriad (launched by Decrypt’s parent company DASTAN), almost two thirds of users expect an XRP ETF to be approved before an LTC one.
Tennessee-based investment firm Canary Capital filed to list an LTC ETF on the Nasdaq on January 15. This was followed less than a month later by filings from Grayscale Investments and CoinShares, though Grayscale applied to list on NYSE Arca.
Some promising market adoption figures have also appeared in recent weeks. According to CoinGate, a cryptocurrency payment gateway that processes digital asset transactions for merchants, Litecoin captured the second-largest share of crypto payments on the platform last month—14.5%, just behind Bitcoin and narrowly ahead of USDC.
Corporate Treasuries are Pushing Prices
MEI Pharma, a publicly traded pharmaceutical company, closed a $100 million private placement at the end of last month to transform itself into a Litecoin treasury firm. Illia Otychenko, lead analyst at the crypto exchange CEX.IO, feels that MEI Pharma’s treasury buy is the primary driver behind Litecoin’s recent success, more so than ETF rumors or market adoption.
“The 90% odds for Litecoin ETFs have been around since February, when the SEC acknowledged Litecoin ETF filings. As a result, he feels “the latest talk about strong ETF chances isn’t new information but rather a reminder that added to existing momentum.” But the recent MEI Pharma investment, in his eyes, could open the door for Litecoin to benefit from future corporate treasury investment, with the practice booming as of late as more and more firms are morphing into crypto investment vehicles.