LTC is sluggish with halving imminent. Maybe it’s just BTC’s fault.

Time flies to the end of June, and the LTC halving in August is getting closer. Huobi and OKEx, two major mainstream exchanges, have launched activities to promote LTC spot and contract trading. However, as BTC continues to break through integer barriers and approach the 14,000USDT barrier, LTC has continued to fall after breaking through the 145USDT barrier and is currently hovering at 131USDT. With the halving imminent, LTC is sluggish. Has the price expectation brought by the halving ended?

Throughout mid-to-early June, the price of LTC showed an overall upward trend, and there were even "bull market" trends with a single-day increase of 12.23% (June 7) and 10.98% (June 12). There were constant calls for LTC to break through $150, $160, and $170. In late June, OKEx and Huobi launched LTC activities one after another. On the 17th, OKEx launched an LTC delivery contract opening bonus event, and bonuses could be received if a certain number of delivery contracts were met. A few days later, it launched the "Create an OKEx wallet and get LTC airdrop" event. Huobi was not to be outdone, and on the 19th, it launched the Fomo LTC event, giving 50% of the handling fees of all LTC trading pairs to users who traded or held LTC. Stimulated by various activities, LTC's trading volume is still relatively active, but overall it is still not as good as in early June. Huobi data shows that LTC has never broken through $141 since it hit $145.8 on the 22nd. Today, it is temporarily reported at $130.97, a 24-hour drop of 4.64%. Some investors even believe that LTC trading volume continues to decline, and large investors need to take advantage of the event to sell their stocks. After all, from the low point to now, LTC has more than doubled five times.

Data source: Huobi

With the decline of LTC today, many technical analysts are not optimistic about the short-term future trend of LTC. Analyst Chen Chuchu believes that the opening and contraction of the daily Bollinger Bands of LTC remain parallel, and the price has fallen below the middle track of the Bollinger Bands. The trend has entered the downward channel at this stage, so if the price cannot return to $135 in the short term, the trend will tend to decline, forming a sharp correction trend. Babbitt Pirate columnist Tan Bi Lun Jin said in the article that LTC's recent trend has been relatively weak. Now the 5-day and 10-day lines have formed a dead cross, and the MACD indicator continues to maintain a dead cross and diverge downward. It is expected that the target will continue to fall back to the support of $125 to observe whether it can stabilize at this point. I personally tend to think that it cannot stabilize at this point and will continue to look for support downward. Pay attention to risks.

Why is LTC so sluggish with the halving approaching? On the one hand, according to the situation when LTC halved in 2015, LTC reached a historical high before the halving, but began to fall 45 days before the halving and continued to fall. Of course, the current crypto market is very different from that time. Maybe LTC's decline has already begun, but in the context of the current bull market, it is just "sluggish".

On the other hand, it is not that LTC is not good enough, but that BTC is too good. BTC hits a new high almost every few days, and the price curve of mainstream coins and BTC continues to decline. BTC is seriously "sucking blood" from mainstream coins. In today's market, except for HT, all mainstream coins are in the green, and only BTC shows a slight upward trend.

Data source: Huobi

In many analyses, we see that institutional entry is considered the main driving force of this round of rise. Against the backdrop of the Sino-US trade war and Brexit, only BTC's safe-haven properties are recognized by some institutional investors among crypto assets. News about Bitcoin ETFs still appear from time to time in investors' horizons, and the test of Bakkt Bitcoin futures has attracted investors' attention to BTC. At the same time, the high price expectations brought about by the halving of BTC in 2020 also brought enough confidence to investors. A report released this month by digital currency fund Grayscale showed that the fund's investment in BTC has increased from less than 50% last year to 71.9% at the end of May. With the entry of institutions, the price of BTC has been rising steadily, and the FOMO sentiment of retail investors has continued to accumulate. The reflexivity of the crypto investment market has been fully demonstrated: the more it rises, the more you buy, and the more you buy, the higher it rises.

LTC halving is imminent, but perhaps, this bull market is just a bull market for BTC.