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Litecoin Mining Difficulty Is Hitting New Highs, Foundation Says
The network’s mining difficulty peaked on Friday, indicating increased competition for miner rewards.
Updated Nov 8, 2022, 2:20 p.m. Published Nov 5, 2022, 6:18 a.m.
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Litecoin mining difficulty is at a new high, peaking at just under 18 million hashes, according to a post by the Litecoin Foundation on cryptocurrency market data site coinmarketcap.com.
Mining difficulty measures the average number of hashes required to “solve” a block. Litecoin miners compete by generating random hashes to find one lower than the target set by the network’s mining algorithm. Whoever wins this computationally intensive lottery gets to add a new block to the Litecoin blockchain and earns a reward.
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The increase in Litecoin’s mining difficulty likely means the competition for miner rewards is heating up.
The cryptocurrency, sometimes referred to as “digital silver,” also has a “halvening” event on the horizon. When Litecoin was launched in 2011, miners received 50 litecoins (LTC) for successfully mining a block. That reward (called a “subsidy”) is halved every 840,000 blocks (roughly every four years). The third halving takes place in 2023 and reduces the current 12.5 LTC subsidy to 6.25 LTC.
The price of LTC is holding steady, trading at $68.04 at the time of publication. However, on Wednesday, LTC’s price spiked 13% in a single day, probably due to payments giant MoneyGram’s announcement that its U.S. customers will soon be able to buy, sell and hold LTC, bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) in the MoneyGram mobile app.
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KuCoin captured a record share of centralised exchange volume in 2025, with more than $1.25tn traded as its volumes grew faster than the wider crypto market.
What to know:
- KuCoin recorded over $1.25 trillion in total trading volume in 2025, equivalent to an average of roughly $114 billion per month, marking its strongest year on record.
- This performance translated into an all-time high share of centralised exchange volume, as KuCoin’s activity expanded faster than aggregate CEX volumes, which slowed during periods of lower market volatility.
- Spot and derivatives volumes were evenly split, each exceeding $500 billion for the year, signalling broad-based usage rather than reliance on a single product line.
- Altcoins accounted for the majority of trading activity, reinforcing KuCoin’s role as a primary liquidity venue beyond BTC and ETH at a time when majors saw more muted turnover.
- Even as overall crypto volumes softened mid-year, KuCoin maintained elevated baseline activity, indicating structurally higher user engagement rather than short-lived volume spikes.
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Solana’s new phase is ‘much more about finance,’ says Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante
The Solana ecosystem has spent the past year doubling down on a financial infrastructure, Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante told CoinDesk.
What to know:
- Solana’s latest phase looks a lot less flashy than its memecoin-fueled highs, and that may be the goal.
- Armani Ferrante, CEO of crypto exchange Backpack, told CoinDesk in an interview the Solana ecosystem has spent the past year doubling down on a more sober focus: financial infrastructure. A
- fter years of experimentation as the wider crypto industry focused on NFTs, games and social tokens, attention is now shifting back toward decentralized finance, trading and payments.
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