As most cryptocurrencies, Litecoin has been on the rise too in 2017. The token price was around 6 dollars in April 1st but it has been catapulted to over 100 dollars today. Accordingly, its market capitalization has seen a massive: from $328 Million in April 1st to $5,5 Billion today. Who benefits the most from this sudden increase and influx of liquidity?
If the numbers reported by BitInfoCharts.com are correct, there are only 72 addresses that hold 43% of all litecoins. These 72 addresses have a balance from 100,000 to 10,000,000 coins (out of 54,1 million LTC in circulation today). Widen the balance limit a bit, and you get the astonishing fact that 59,48% of all litecoins belong to 428 addresses.
Here’s the LTC distribution:
Note that only two litecoin addresses hold more than 1 million of coins each. That’s right, if you run the numbers by today’s LTC price, each of these two addresses worth more than $100 million!
For your scrutiny, here’s the top-10 addresses along with their links:
| No | Address | Balance △1w | % of coins | First In | Last In |
| 1 | LdP8Qox1VAhCzLJNqrr74YovaWYyNBUWvL | 1,170,001 LTC ($118,998,013 USD) -250000 LTC | 2.16% | 2014-07-24 21:47:12 | 2017-11-29 11:37:28 |
| 2 | LQV3RM45WXVnkAgsx3xJPqbxSCFHbxAaNp | 1,016,812 LTC ($103,417,522 USD) | 1.88% | 2017-12-01 17:51:43 | 2017-12-01 17:51:43 |
| 3 | LQE1nLvz6qXx6xz1X7hN9FLQ1fXCA7jm6f | 960,000 LTC ($97,639,307 USD) | 1.77% | 2017-09-22 06:57:28 | 2017-11-13 16:49:17 |
| 4 | LY5fxZS74Ewuj1TTHwat23eUmZwimsksrU | 773,647 LTC ($78,685,826 USD) | 1.43% | 2017-08-09 00:57:34 | 2017-09-06 16:09:48 |
| 5 | Laub752qu81oWwkNKEyawyKruUC6cEyD2x | 768,208 LTC ($78,132,551 USD) | 1.42% | 2017-07-31 17:48:53 | 2017-09-06 19:42:18 |
| 6 | LbHBMZTQBq7aM5WS5TeKYJWH8pxeaLoRXe | 762,497 LTC ($77,551,772 USD) | 1.41% | 2017-08-08 10:17:58 | 2017-09-06 17:41:01 |
| 7 | LPpVeFSKvH593CChqP9qpV5toEXntekjiF | 704,140 LTC ($71,616,407 USD) | 1.30% | 2017-04-06 11:28:05 | 2017-07-13 01:20:43 |
| 8 | LfmG6qepmucU2aQaVJK4EJgBzQHeGz5ML4 | 694,656 LTC ($70,651,765 USD) | 1.28% | 2017-04-06 10:48:24 | 2017-07-13 16:31:27 |
| 9 | LRQdhba7Ymi8dR2GJVnm6NcB4XjU3RDjRu | 663,088 LTC ($67,441,091 USD) | 1.22% | 2017-07-17 01:38:32 | 2017-07-21 09:53:27 |
| 10 | LWVELMKqeXoxCwBM9fd355hxLtWuVxJMNP | 647,139 LTC ($65,818,940 USD) | 1.20% | 2017-05-26 15:36:29 | 2017-07-28 00:33:19 |
(Source: BitInfoCharts)
You might think that Litecoin’s creator, Charlie Lee, might be the owner of some of these super-rich addresses but that’s not correct. On a reddit forum, Lee (aka coblee) has denied ownership, saying that possibly these belong to cryptocurrency exchanges moving lots of coins.
Update: Litecoin creator Charlie Lee Sold And Donated All His LTC, Citing "Conflict Of Interest"
We cannot know for sure but the fact is that Litecoin weatlh distribution is highly centralized as almost half of the coins in circulation today are owned by a handful of organizations or persons. Mind you, this situation is not uncommon in cryptocurrencies. As JustCryptoNews.com has reported, the wealth distribution in Bitcoin follows a similar Pareto pattern: 96% of all bitcoins belong to only 3% of all addresses.
To complete the picture see the price chart of Litecoin for 2017. The LTC/USD price in Coinbase was just below 6 dollars on April 1st. It is now traded for over $100 dollars.
