Litecoin (LTC) has declined to its lowest price level in over four months, falling nearly 12% in the past week. On the daily chart, LTC dropped to its lowest point since October 2025, with technical indicators like the RSI showing heavy selling pressure and the MACD remaining negative. The price has struggled to reclaim lost ground, trading below key moving averages and frequently hitting the lower Bollinger Band amid increased volatility.
Despite the bearish price action, Litecoin's fundamental usage and institutional support are climbing. SBI VC Trade, a cryptocurrency exchange backed by Japan's SBI Holdings, recently added LTC to its crypto lending program, allowing users in Japan to lend Litecoin to earn interest. This places LTC alongside major assets like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and XRP in the platform's offerings.
Furthermore, payment processor data from CoinGate reveals Litecoin was the third most-used cryptocurrency for payments in January 2026, accounting for 17.7% of transactions, trailing only Bitcoin and USD Coin (USDC). This represents growth from a 16.4% share in December 2025. Concurrently, activity on Litecoin's opt-in privacy layer, MWEB, has hit a new high, with a massive increase in the amount of LTC locked into the protocol over the past month.
On the price front, LTC is currently testing a decisive resistance level at $64, following a 35% decline from its early-2026 high of $81. A breakout above $64 could trigger a bullish move toward $73 and $80. The long-term outlook is bolstered by strong network fundamentals, including an all-time high hashrate of 3.34 PH/s and over 75 million transactions recorded on the network in 2025 alone.
Institutional interest is also evident, with firms like Lite Strategy purchasing $100 million worth of LTC and Luxxfolio investing $73 million. The future viability of Litecoin is closely tied to its upcoming LitVM upgrade, a Layer-2 solution that will introduce Ethereum-compatible smart contracts. Scheduled for testnet in Q1 2026 and mainnet in Q2 2026, this upgrade is anticipated to spur developer activity and DeFi adoption. Analysts project LTC could reach between $95 and $140 by the end of 2026, with an average target of $115, though this is contingent on successful developer adoption.
