Litecoin Price Analysis: LTC/USD bulls have low chances as long as the price is below daily SMA50

• LTC/USD recovers from Monday's low, still under pressure.
• The recovery may be sabotaged on approach to daily SMA50.

Litecoin experienced a sharp sell-off towards $42.63 on Monday and managed to recover to $43.44 by the time of writing. The 9th largest digital asset with the current market value of $2.88 billion has lost over 13% on a day-to-day basis and 1% since the beginning of the day. The coin is moving in sync with the market within a short-term bearish trend amid high volatility.

Litecoin's on-chain data

Only 26% of Litecoin holders are making money at the current price levels. It means that the majority of holders bought their coins above the current price. A large cluster of LTC addresses with over 5 million coins has their breakeven level in the range from $44.60 to $52.60, which coincides with the upper boundary of the long-term consolidation channel that has been limiting LTC movements since the sharp sell-off in the middle of March. The number of active addresses stayed mostly unchanged at 79.4k since the end of June, despite the price recovery from $39.44. 

LTC/USD: Technical picture

Litecoin (LTC) dropped below $44.00 on Monday, and now this barrier serves as a strong resistance level for the coin. A combination of daily SMA50 and SMA100 located above $44.00 make it a hard target for the bulls. However, once it is broken, the recovery may be extended towards Monday's high of $45.50 and $45.80. This level stopped the upside momentum during the previous week and also served as strong resistance in the middle of June.

On the downside, the local support is created by the above-mentioned low of $42.62. Once it is out of the way, the sell-off is likely to gain traction with the next focus on $42.20-42.00, the former resistance that limited the price increase at the end of June. A sustainable below above this area will open up the way to $40.00.

LTC/YSD daily chart

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