Why is Litecoin up today?

Litecoin is up 16.8% over 24 hours to $71.88 and 32.5% on the week, dramatically outpacing bitcoin, which is flat on the day and up 10.3% over seven days. The proximate driver is a surge in on-chain usage: Crypto Briefing and CoinDesk both reported Wednesday that LTC jumped as network activity hit new highs, with transaction growth cited as evidence of expanding utility and institutional interest. The move is coin-specific — LTC's $1.73B of 24-hour volume is unusually large against a $5.58B market cap for the No. 24 asset.

The backdrop is mixed. The Federal Reserve opened two proposals for comment under the GENIUS Act, requiring supervised stablecoin issuers to fully back tokens with safe assets and creating a bank application process, while New York sued Polymarket over unlicensed gambling and roughly $350 million was drained from wallets labeled as Bitget's.

Macro conditions are tightening: the US 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.44%, its highest since 2004. LTC has slipped 0.5% in the past hour as the initial move cools.