The Halvening is Coming in Fast

Litecoinblockhalf.com will show you that the Litecoin Halvening will happen in less than 13,466 blocks. Each block on the Litecoin network takes roughly 2.5 minutes, so we can come to an estimation that the halvening will occur on August 5, 2019. That’s less than 25 days away from the time of writing this.

What is the Halvening?

Briefly, if you don’t know much about mining rewards, many cryptocurrencies have a cap so there can’t be more than a decided amount of coins ever minted on the network. For Litecoin, this particular amount of coins is 84,000,000. The way that we reach this number from 0 coins is not exactly linear. Every 840,000 blocks, the Litecoin network cuts the reward for finding a block in half. Effectively tapering off the rewards slowly until 84,000,000 coins have been created. During this Litecoin halvening, the reward for a block will drop from 25 Litecoin to 12.5 Litecoin.

How Might this Matter?

Litecoin mining is centered around the block reward. Many miners may be just beating the cost of electricity for them to mine. For this reason, when the block reward is cut in half, the market is going to have to make a big swing to compensate. There is no telling what may happen, but there are a few possibilities one can imagine.

Hashrate Drop

Since mining may not be profitable for many miners after this halvening, many miners that can no longer turn a profit may turn off and sell their machines. Perhaps in this scenario, larger mining pools and farms may remain online and continue making a profit.

Litecoin Price Increase

Another possibility is that the price of Litecoin will increase to compensate for the lowered block reward. If the price of Litecoin doubles, miners won’t feel an effect, because they will be mining half the coins, but they will be getting the same value out of it.

Each Bitcoin halvening has coincided with broad price speculations, but the halvening has not directly and immediately affected much. This article on medium takes a much further in-depth look for the effects of the Bitcoin halvening on both price and hash rate. The most likely to come is a miner drop out, and subsequently blocktime variation. If you expect the Litecoin market to react similarly to the Bitcoin market, a price change shouldn’t be expected for some time after the halvening. But this is, in fact, the first halvening for Litecoin, and there is no way to know if the Litecoin market will react in the same way.

How this Info Can Help You

Whether you mine or trade Litecoin, preparing for the halvening will at least allow you to decide on what to do. It’s a significant event for the network, so it’s essential to be prepared for it no matter what however you are involved.

Next: Small Scale ASIC Mining
Previous: Open Source Bitcoin Payments
>> Home