Whales who got them for a few cents or mined them in the early days could still be holding them, simply because they have too many of them and can't sell all at once because the market is too thin, so they are selling them off gradually. Now, who is buying - that's the question.
If you look at the graph, LTC was around 0.007 and the majority opinion at the time was that litecoin was dead. But then Max Keiser came along out of nowhere and announced a target of $50. Immediately afterwards the price spiked. A few days later, Karl Gray announced $50 target on his twitter.
Now who is Karl Gray? It's not just anybody. In fact Karl Gray holds approximately 100 000 BTC. And he wants more, he was one of the sellers during our latest BTC rise to $1k ++ and subsequent drop. He has already bought back at massive profit.
Max Keiser is no minor btc player either, with 5-digit worth of BTC in his holdings. It seems pretty likely that Max and Karl accumulated litecoin near the bottom only to hype and pump it up massively to sell out for 3-5x return on their investment. All the sheeps bought and are now holding the bag.
Why litecoin? Liquidity. These guys own 5 and 6 digits amount of BTC. They need massive liquidity to increase their holdings by any significant degree. And as such litecoin has been a blessing. Will history repeat itself? That's the question. It honestly would not surprise me at all. Due to this I will be looking at LTC again sub 0.01. I don't believe in LTC, but I'd certainly ride along for such a massive pump if I can. There is ofc the risk that I'll be going down with a sinking ship, so I have no hurry and will only consider prices below 0.01, anything else is too much atm.
It's important to buy when there is blood in the street. The current decline is painful but we need a lot more despair and people to lose faith before it's a good buying opportunity.
Yeah, if you can find a good trade like that where you think have a good chance at making profit it could be good. Litecoin seems to be in the process of fully decoupling itself from bitcoin, but when bitcoin gets another bubble going all the alts including ltc will be going up likely. Especially if we get big names attempting to pump it like you said. Now that you mention that I'll definitely be on the lookout for that litecoin pump and dump trade if Max or Karl Grey attempt to do it again. Thanks for the post.
But buying and holding for the long term seems like a bad idea. The future looks bleak for Litecoin.