Litecoin’s hashrate down 60% due to the latest Litecoin halving

[JessicaVL]

The Litecoin hashrate is down 60% due to the latest block halving which occurred on 5 August 2019. Since peaking in July, the network hashrate has fallen considerably, as mining profitability has reduced significantly.

What is Litecoin?
Litecoin is the 6th largest cryptocurrency according to market cap. At the time of writing, Litecoin is worth $2,983,421,550, a total supply of 84 million LTC, and the current Litecoin price at $46.83. Litecoin was founded in 2011 by Charlie Lee, a former Google employee and Engineering Director of Coinbase.

What is Litecoin exactly? Litecoin was originally a software fork of Bitcoin, and works on a Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm. This means that miners are compensated with fees for validating transactions on the network. Litecoin has a finite coin supply, so the network needs to generate enough usage to fairly compensate miners and maintain a good hashrate once the total supply is reached.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dmf4LhY11A&t=53s

Hashrate down
Litecoin’s halving happened on 5 August 2019, when the reward for mining a block dropped from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC. The Litecoin hashrate has experienced a significant drop, reducing from 523 T/H to 181 T/H in a little over three months which also affected the litecoin price.

https://twitter.com/hodlonaut/status/1191157153941327873?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1191157153941327873&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbeincrypto.com%2Flitecoin-hashrate-down-60-but-mining-profitability-stabilizing%2F

Litecoin mining profitability has reduced substantially, which has caused many miners to switch off their mining equipment or move to other networks. This decrease in mining activity is not exactly a good sign for Litecoin. A lower hashrate means that participation in the network is reduced, which further decreases the security of a Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain like Litecoin.

However, the Litecoin halving is widely considered to be a positive long-term move for the blockchain, as it decreases inflation. In the meantime, miners will need to cover the shortfall of their operating costs, which leads to the decrease in hashrate and causes mining profitability to fall.

Improving profitability
While things might not be looking good for Litecoin on the surface, the fact that it’s built on a PoW blockchain actually benefits it. Even with a falling hashrate, there are some positives to be found. A lower hashrate means that hashing blocks becomes less difficult. So, Litecoin’s difficulty has fallen by 60% - coinciding with the decreasing hashrate.

The difficulty adjustment mechanisms helps to balance mining profitability, and can help smooth things out when the hashrate falls. Litecoin should recover when miner interest picks up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG08USuERgE

Litecoin Halving
While the Litecoin hashrate is down 60% due to the latest block halving, it’s not all doom and gloom for the coin. The Litecoin halving has affected the mining profitability and the hashrate, but there is still a chance for recovery in the near future. With that being said, things are definitely not looking so good for the cryptocurrency at this point in time.

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https://www.etoro.com/blog/market-insights/litecoins-hashrate-down-60-due-to-the-latest-litecoin-halving/

[asriloni]

This is not a big surprise to happen with litecoin since mining litecoin is not profitable anymore and those 60% hashrate are sticking to another coin. As you can see some altcoins just like raven, grin were getting a huge increase on its total hashrate. As long as that will not give a bad impact to the litecoin network and nothing to be worried. Even if the block will be less difficult but the major players or miners will be a party that can take the advantage from there consider about the small miners have been moving their hashrate to the another altcoin like cryptonight coins.
But with the hashrate was going down a lot and the possibility of 51% attack will increase.

[vanya.pronin.1983]

I have expected so much from LTC, because halving is a very important process for price growth, but what happened with LTC is just unbelievable. This coin added 20 percent before halving and dropped 40 percent few days after.

[bitcampaign]

I think Litecoin is just waiting where Bitcoin will halving later, because all old altcoins choose to follow the value of the price of bitcoin so they wait for the next bitcoin halving than I know, if this hashrate reduction will also occur when later Bitcoin halving will not have any movement in the price, miners will lose and prefer to switch to profitable mining or sell all of their mining equipment, there is no major problem with decreasing the hashrate and it does not paralyze transactions to be slower or harder to find blocks, but it will be more frightening for big traders if bitcoin and litecoin become $ 0 because not get new beliefs

[0xcosmos]

the anticipation of halving resulted in major buy which resulted in increase in ltc price before the halving

but after halving
miners started to capitulation their ltc to liquidate some money to handle the electricity and other associated costs for the future
which resulted in downward trend in price plus with the bearish market made it much more terrible

[ralle14]

I have expected so much from LTC, because halving is a very important process for price growth, but what happened with LTC is just unbelievable. This coin added 20 percent before halving and dropped 40 percent few days after.

When Litecoin had some growth nearly almost all coins are in the same position since Bitcoin was also showing some significant growth in price. Now that Bitcoin is heading down it's not a surprise that Litecoin is going down as well but it's only a few months in after the halving.

I think Litecoin is just waiting where Bitcoin will halving later, because all old altcoins choose to follow the value of the price of bitcoin so they wait for the next bitcoin halving than I know, if this hashrate reduction will also occur when later Bitcoin halving will not have any movement in the price, miners will lose and prefer to switch to profitable mining or sell all of their mining equipment, there is no major problem with decreasing the hashrate and it does not paralyze transactions to be slower or harder to find blocks, but it will be more frightening for big traders if bitcoin and litecoin become $ 0 because not get new beliefs

It's not that altcoins choose to follow Bitcoin's price, exchanges always have trading pairs between Bitcoin and altcoins that's why the changes are mostly similar.

[alyssa85]

I have expected so much from LTC, because halving is a very important process for price growth, but what happened with LTC is just unbelievable. This coin added 20 percent before halving and dropped 40 percent few days after.

It's the old investment adage: buy in anticipation, sell on confirmation (or buy the rumour, sell the news).

I'm pretty sure the same thing will happen to bitcoin. The price might surge to $20,000 and then there will be a lot of profit taking.

[bgaf]

Prior to its halving the price of litecoin pump and suddenly fluctuate of course this is due to profit takers who already have big gains. It's still law of demand and supply. Many anticipated thr pump of it before the halving and those wise people are the one take advantage of it before it totally depleted.

[el kaka22]

Now, this is a good news for bitcoin buyers/selers and earners/spenders yet this is also a huge problem for bitcoin miners.

What you may not realize is that big bitcoin miners are super rich, and I mean SUPER rich, there was even talks of a 200 million dollar bitcoin mining company to be built in Texas which wouldn't have been the biggest bitcoin miner if built (don't know if it was built in the end). So, long story short there are people who make millions of dollars PER DAY on bitcoin mining, if it gets smaller in profits and harder to make money with bitcoin mining, that would mean there would be less small time miners and only the giants of bitcoin mining would stay around and that may lead to bitcoin centralization if they get into too much power without any competition.

[poornamelessme]

I have expected so much from LTC, because halving is a very important process for price growth, but what happened with LTC is just unbelievable. This coin added 20 percent before halving and dropped 40 percent few days after.

It's the old investment adage: buy in anticipation, sell on confirmation (or buy the rumour, sell the news).

I'm pretty sure the same thing will happen to bitcoin. The price might surge to $20,000 and then there will be a lot of profit taking.

I expect the same. Although it'd be nice of it hit that 20K early, then bounced off of that before the halvening. But the way things are looking, 20K may be the best case scenario.

The LTC thing wasn't unbelievable like the other poster thinks... just that the price was baked in earlier than expected. A drop-off afterwards was quite normal. The fact that BTC decided to do its up/down thing right after and smush the entire alt market probably didn't help matters much.

[OneCoinMan]

I think that lightcoin, on the contrary, will become more popular because its amount that will hit the market will decrease, everyone remembers what happened with bitcoin when it came time to cut the rewards for the mined block, for those who don’t remember, I’ll say it, I updated my maximum and I I think that each coin before cutting the block reward will grow, as interest grows in those coins which are becoming less and less.

[bitcampaign]

I think Litecoin is just waiting where Bitcoin will halving later, because all old altcoins choose to follow the value of the price of bitcoin so they wait for the next bitcoin halving than I know, if this hashrate reduction will also occur when later Bitcoin halving will not have any movement in the price, miners will lose and prefer to switch to profitable mining or sell all of their mining equipment, there is no major problem with decreasing the hashrate and it does not paralyze transactions to be slower or harder to find blocks, but it will be more frightening for big traders if bitcoin and litecoin become $ 0 because not get new beliefs

It's not that altcoins choose to follow Bitcoin's price, exchanges always have trading pairs between Bitcoin and altcoins that's why the changes are mostly similar.

yes I know because altcoin has a pair with bitcoin on the exchange, but we also don't forget that litecoin also has pairs with stablecoin USDT the same as BTC, so indeed some older altcoins follow bitcoin except newcomer altcoins I don't think they will be the same

[magneto]

I'm fairly sure that it would be unfair to attribute all of the hashrate losses to litecoin's halving event. Rather, the decline in LTC values after the initial bull run earlier in the year likely had something to do with it as well.

The overall hash rate for smaller cap coins likely dropped as well, not just LTC.

Monetary incentive is a powerful thing, and there is no surprises here that capital will be always reallocated to the most profitable venture.

[maianh09]

This is not a big surprise to happen with litecoin since mining litecoin is not profitable anymore and those 60% hashrate are sticking to another coin. As you can see some altcoins just like raven, grin were getting a huge increase on its total hashrate. As long as that will not give a bad impact to the litecoin network and nothing to be worried. Even if the block will be less difficult but the major players or miners will be a party that can take the advantage from there consider about the small miners have been moving their hashrate to the another altcoin like cryptonight coins.
But with the hashrate was going down a lot and the possibility of 51% attack will increase.

Miners do their job for profit if the Litecoin mining does not guarantee profitability as before, they will not do it anymore and will switch to another crypto with a higher profit. I am imagining that if Bitcoin comes here to reduce the reward by 50% whether miners will continue mining or they will stop mining. In order to maintain mining, the price of Litecoin or Bitcoin must be pushed up.
Similarly, Bitcoin attacks 51% can happen to Bitcoin because when small mines are closed and only large mines are left if they shake hands to perform 51% attacks, it is possible.

[drlukacs]

I also foresaw Litecoin's future about how bad it would be to keep its price low. miners are getting depressed and they may leave litecoin anytime and they can move in and mine bitcoins.
Meanwhile, Litecoin transactions will become much more expensive and longer. That makes the frustration for litecoin believers and users for a long time. It's no joke that Litecoin's transaction fee has increased by 5 times. in the future it will increase more and more events will continue to happen.