From Halving to Halving: Litecoin Has Seen Massive Rise

The fourth cryptocurrency network by market capitalization, Litecoin (LTC), is nearing its second halving. And while the Litecoin block mining reward will decrease by half again, other numbers show that the network metrics have significantly increased in four years since its first halving.

The halving is estimated to happen on August 5th, when the digital currency’s rate of new supply will be reduced in half from LTC 25 (USD 2,427) to LTC 12.5 per mined Litecoin blockchain block. The last time this event took place was on August 25th 2015, when the Litecoin block mining reward went from LTC 50 to 25 LTC.

We compared how the Litecoin network looked like one week before the halving in 2015 and one week before the upcoming halving.

This is what we have found:

• The price is up by 2,370%.
• Accordingly, the market capitalization surpassed USD 6 billion.
• The average block size jumped 513%.
• The active address count increased seven fold.
• Hashrate, or computing power of the Litecoin network, is up by 37,379%, while the mining difficulty has also skyrocketed.
• Transactions, transfers are up by 475%.
• The mean value of transactions, transfers increased 83%.
• The mean fee per transaction dropped 25%
• The average number of tweets on the week that ended on July 29 is 24% higher, while Google trends are also showing more searches for “Litecoin”.

And this is how it looks in one table:

The halving is bound to bring some changes, which is why the traders are bracing for a period of increased volatility, while miners will be earning lower rewards. As previously reported, though, Litecoin creator, Charlie Lee, who claims that he sold all his litecoin holdings in 2017, said that halving is always a “shock to the system” and some miners will not be profitable and “will shut off their machines”.

If a large percentage of miners shuts their machines off, then it would slow down the network for some time. “For Litecoin, it’s two and a half days till next change, so possibly seven days”, explains Lee, adding that the mining difficulty will readjust and everything will be fine after that period. Also, according to Lee, this halving should already be priced in by the market as everyone knew it was coming. At pixel time (15:55 UTC), LTC trades at c. USD 97 and is down by 0.65% in the past 24 hours and is up by 4% in the past week.

Litecoin price chart in 2015, before and after the halving on August 25:

Litecoin price chart in 2019: