An important event in Litecoin’s history unfolded on August 2: the third halving. This entailed a reduction in the mining reward from 12.5 to 6.25 coins. In the Litecoin network, halving happens every 840,000 blocks or once every 4 years. In honor of this event, we’ve compiled a brief overview of this cryptocurrency, tracing its history, and its current market status.
What is Litecoin
Litecoin is a cryptocurrency created by Charlie Lee, a former Google engineer, in 2011.
Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin, wherein some changes were integrated into the Bitcoin source code to establish a new separate blockchain.
Lee’s intention behind Litecoin was to provide a more optimized version of Bitcoin with swifter transaction speeds. This is achieved through faster block generation intervals of 2.5 minutes, in contrast to Bitcoin’s 10-minute block generation time.
Being one of the oldest cryptocurrencies, Litecoin is often called “digital silver” in the crypto community, analogous to Bitcoin’s as “digital gold”.
Key Litecoin's milestones
October 8, 2011: First block mined;
October 7, 2014: Total Litecoin transactions exceed 5 million;
August 25, 2015: First halving event, reducing block rewards from 50 to 25 litecoins;
May 2017: Segregated Witness (SegWit) upgrade;
SegWit is a technology enhancing blockchain's transaction capacity, later also implemented in Bitcoin in July of the same year.
August 5, 2019: Second halving event, reducing block rewards from 25 to 12.5 litecoins ;
May 10, 2021: Litecoin reaches its all-time-high (ATH) at $413;
August 2, 2023: Third halving event, reducing block rewards from 12.5 to 6.25 litecoins.
Litecoin on-chain stats
Since the launch in 2022, in the Litecoin blockchain there were:
💸 170 million transactions confirmed;
👛 Almost 9 million addresses created;
⛏️ 2,5 million blocks mined.
Current LTC market situation
At the moment, the price of Litecoin (LTC) is around $86, boasting a market capitalization of $6.6 billion, and securing its position as the 11th largest cryptocurrency. Yesterday, a few hours before the halving, the price reached nearly $95, only to retract to $86 thereafter. The chart below exhibits dotted lines denoting the months of previous halvings.
The chart demonstrates that Litecoin’s price did not witness an immediate increase post halving, tempering expectations of a price pump. As observed with numerous coins in the crypto market, LTC tends to follow Bitcoin’s trajectory. Hence, on the eve of BTC’s halving, which will occur in the spring of 2024, we should expect some big movements.
On the other hand, according to Santiment, there is now an accumulation of LTC coins, suggesting the possibility of surprises and potential deviations from historical patterns.
Halving special from Litecoin Foundation and Ballet
The Litecoin Foundation and Ballet, a company specializing in creating crypto cold storage cards, announced a special promo amid the halving. This limited edition consists of 500 exclusive collector's cards, each crafted from 50 grams of high-quality silver and loaded with a minimum of 6.25 Litecoin.
The anticipated sale, slated for later this month, is projected to value each card roughly at $1,000. Notably, these cards are poised to retain their value due to their silver content, even in the event of LTC price fluctuations.
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