The altcoin market eagerly awaited the completion of the Litecoin halving event, which has now officially taken place. This major event in the Litecoin network has generated a lot of interest, with many questioning its possible impact on the price of LTC.
Block rewards now halved at 6.25 LTC
The Litecoin network has successfully undergone its halving, reducing block rewards from 12.5 LTC to 6.25 Litecoin per block.
On August 2, the automated halving process was activated on the Litecoin blockchain at block 2,520,000. This has resulted in LTC miners now receiving half of the previous rewards, paving the way for the next halving event, which is expected to take place in about four years.
Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin, addressed the inconsistencies between various halving countdown timers and endorsed the NiceHash timer as the most accurate. Despite minor differences, all timers agreed on the halving event to take place on August 2. This was the third halving event for the network since Litecoin was first introduced in 2011.
BitPay CEO Stephen Pair recently commented on the increasing use of Litecoin as a payment method. He noted that both Litecoin and Bitcoin Lightning payments recently recorded their highest usage months on the global payments platform.
As of June, Litecoin has overtaken Bitcoin as the preferred cryptocurrency for payments on BitPay, accounting for 35% of transactions. In the past 30 days, BitPay reports to have processed a total of 57,949 transactions related to cryptocurrency.
For those unfamiliar with the term, a “halving” is a planned event in the life of certain cryptocurrencies where the reward for mining new blocks is cut in half. This effectively reduces the rate at which new coins are created and slows down the overall inflation of the cryptocurrency.
LTC price continues to fall
Immediately after the halving, the price of Litecoin showed a slight drop. Historically, the price of Litecoin tends to rise in the months following a halving. After the first halving in 2015, the price of LTC rose significantly the following year. Similarly, the second halving in 2019 was followed by a period of price growth.
Since reaching a high of $115 in early July, the first time since April 2022, Litecoin prices have been on a downward trend. Currently, the cryptocurrency, often referred to as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold, is trading at around $89.5, down more than 3.5% in the past 24 hours.
With a market cap of $6.5 billion, Litecoin is the 11th largest cryptocurrency. The daily trading volume is about 800 million.
There are currently 73.5 million LTC in circulation, out of a maximum supply of 84 million.