Despite this period of market stagnation, not all cryptos are performing in the same way: let’s analyze in particular LTC (Litecoin), APT (Aptos), and XRP (Ripple).
Analysis of Litecoin (LTC) price: comparison with Aptos (APT) and Ripple (XRP)
The price of LTC, the cryptocurrency of Litecoin, has been virtually stagnant for a week.
It started 2024 at $73, but by early January it had already dropped below $64.
On January 12th, it had risen to $76, but only to fall back to $64 a few days later.
Since mid-September 2023, it has been trading sideways within a range of $60 and $75, with brief excursions slightly above or slightly below.
The problem is that it had perhaps risen a bit too much before, in view of the halving that took place on August 6th of last year, to the point of surpassing $110 in March.
It had dropped to $50 already in June 2022, after the Terra/Luna implosion and the failure of Celsius, and since then, although it has not significantly fallen below that threshold, it has only been moving sideways in a range between $50 and $80, with the exception of the pre-halving months.
So after the halving in August 2023, it simply returned to trading sideways within an even narrower range, without even taking advantage of the small end-of-year bull run in the crypto markets.
Note that even in the months just before the start of the last major bull run, at the end of 2020, it was oscillating between $50 and $60, so since then it has made very little progress.
At the moment, it is still 83% lower than the highs reached in May 2021, so its market situation does not seem particularly good.
The performance of Aptos (APT)
APT is the cryptocurrency of Aptos, and it has a market capitalization of about 3 billion dollars.
This is a third-tier cryptocurrency, which has lost 3.5% in the last week.
However, its current price is in line with that of a month ago, although compared to the $9.4 at the beginning of the year, it has decreased by 8%.
It landed on the crypto markets only in October 2022, just before the failure of FTX.
The current price of $8.6 is not much higher than the initial $7.2, also because by the end of 2022 it had plummeted to $3.4 with a halving of value in the first two months of existence on the markets.
In 2023, however, it had somewhat recovered, ending January at $18 with a real speculative mini-bubble.
Already in February of last year this bubble had started to deflate, with a decline that lasted almost throughout the year until it dropped below $5 in October.
However, APT has benefited from the recovery of the markets at the end of 2023, rising from $5 to $10 by the end of the year.
However, 2024 did not go as well, with a decrease from $10 to less than $9.
Therefore, it is a fairly volatile cryptocurrency that has not yet experienced a real big boom.
One curious thing is that it follows the trend of the crypto markets, but in a slightly different way compared to the main cryptocurrencies.
In addition, despite being less than a year and a half old, it has a higher market capitalization than significantly more established cryptocurrencies such as OKB from the OKX exchange or LDO from Lido DAO. Recently, it has even surpassed XMR (Monero).
The recent trend of Ripple (XRP)
XRP is the cryptocurrency created by Ripple several years ago.
Until today, despite everything, it is still in the top 10 of the most capitalized cryptocurrencies, and excluding stablecoins, it would be in fifth place overall.
Last year he suffered a lot for the ongoing case against the SEC, but once that case was won, he seemed to be able to recover.
In fact, in July it had exceeded $0.8, but later it had dropped below $0.5.
The current price is exactly $0.5, which is a level around which it has been more or less sideways since the end of 2022, after the failure of FTX. The one in July 2023, in fact, turned out to be just a flash in the pan, despite the clear and definitive victory against SEDC.
It is possible that behind the apparent distrust of the markets towards XRP there is, on one hand, the fact that its value tends to remain fairly stable over time, and on the other hand, the possible new problems that Ripple, the company that created it, could have.
Just to say that $0.5 was the price it had reached at the end of 2020, before the SEC lawsuit and before the start of the latest major bull run.
Furthermore, during the bear market of 2022, it never fell below $0.3, so even in one of its darkest periods, its market value did not decrease by much.
Sure, the times of the historical record of $3.8 in January 2018 are far away, but if we exclude speculative bubbles, its price remains fairly constant over time. To put it better, it is volatile, but without huge excesses, beyond the bubbles.
For example, the $0.3 reached in mid-2022 is in line with the price in mid-2017.
