Litecoin Price Prediction: Is LTC setting up for $100 Breakout or $75 Reverse?

Price Insights:

Litecoin (LTC) price briefly reclaimed $105 on March 11, only to be followed after 5 consecutive red candles that saw LTC dip 24% to a weekly low of $80 on March 17. Despite a mild-recovery in the last 48 hours, critical derivatives market trends suggests that the bears are still largely in the driving seat.

Can the bulls regain control and stage a rebound toward $100, or will they succumb to a $75 reversal?

Traders remained in profit-taking spree since LTC crossed $100

After months of consolidation, Litecoin (LTC) price seemed to finally join the market rally in early March. Between March 1 and March 11, LTC price delivered a remarkable 43% rally.

However, rather than build on the rally, Litecoin has since surrendered most of the gains as it entered 24% pullback between March 11 and March 18, coming close to losing the $80.

But as Litecoin price crossed the $105 milestone on March 11, things took a sharp bearish turn. Over the next 7 trading days, LTC has recorded five losing days, culminating a 24% price reversal. Market data shows that speculative traders booking profits were a major proponents behind the Litecoin price pullback in the past week.

Santiment’s Open Interest metric represents the aggregate value of capital invested in LTC futures contracts across various exchanges and trading platforms.

The chart above shows that Litecoin Open Interest soared to $396.7 million on March 11. But at Litecoin price crossed the the $105 mark on March 11, the derivatives traders began to exit their positions.

At the time of writing on March 18, Litecoin Open Interest has dropped to $291.2 million. This means that investors booking profits have triggered capital outflows of over $105.5 million over the past week.

Essentially, such a large decline in open interest within a short-period is a classic signal of margin calls and stop-loss triggers causing overly leveraged bulls to close out their positions in quick succession.

Interestingly, while LTC bulls have managed to defend the $80 support and stage an 8% rebound in the last 48 hours to reclaim the $86 level, the Open Interest still remains in decline.

This signals that traders are still unconvinced of Litecoin’s rebound prospects. Hence, wthin the current market dynamics, LTC price is not likely to stage a decisive breakout toward $100 in the coming week.

LTC Price Forecast: Likely consolidation within the $80 to $90 range

Based on the insights pulled from the Litecoin derivatives market trends over the past week, LTC price looks set for more consolidation below the $90 level.

In affirmation of this stance, IntoTheBlock’s Global In/Out of the Money data shows that LTC currently faces a major challenge breaking out of the $90 sell-wall.

As seen below, 1.1 million addresses had acquired 11.8 million LTC at the maximum price of $89.  If the profit-taking wave obsereved in the past week lingers, LTC price could struggle to gain sufficient momementum for a decisive breakout toward $100.