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Grayscale’s Win Breathes Life Into Litecoin, Post-Halving Rally On?

In a refreshing ruling on August 29, the United States District of Columbia Court of Appeals said the stringent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was, after all, wrong in denying Grayscale to convert their over-the-counter (OTC) Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). 

The regulator had previously barred the conversion of the GBTC to an ETF, citing an alleged absence of measures to prevent price manipulation, forcing Grayscale to sue. Before this ruling, the presiding judge said SEC needed to elaborate on why they denied Grayscale’s application.

Litecoin Rebounds

Following today’s court statement, Bitcoin prices soared, and the aftermath of this pump has positively impacted Litecoin. As it is, BTC is up roughly 10%, sharply rebounding from around $25,800 support recorded last week. Meanwhile, LTC, the bitcoin “silver,” is up 7% when writing, aiming to reverse losses of August 17. 

Litecoin price on August 29| Source: LTCUSDT on Binance, TradingView

Litecoin is changing hands at around $70, with a noticeable increment in trading volumes. Typically, in crypto trading, a spike in volumes, regardless of trend direction, can point to engagement and provide a “hint” of traders’ sentiment.

With rising volumes and expanding prices, it could suggest that bulls are positioning themselves for even more gains in the sessions ahead. Meanwhile, sharp losses with increasing volumes may mean bears are unloading, and prices may drop.

Post-Halving Rally On?

The expansion in LTC trading volumes, as visible in the daily chart, could translate to a possible bottom for the digital asset that has been under pressure in the past few sessions. To illustrate, LTC is down 26% in August 2023 alone. This dump is despite news of the Litecoin network halving its miner rewards to 6.25 LTC in early August. 

In crypto, halving events has historically been associated with fresh cycles of increasing demand for the underlying coin. For Bitcoin, past performances indicate that the coin tends to rally months after the halving event. Meanwhile, in Litecoin, it has been mixed, but spot prices are generally higher than in 2019 when it halved.

With Grayscale igniting demand in Bitcoin and other proof-of-work altcoins like Litecoin, it is yet to be seen whether bulls will build on this and push prices, especially of LTC, higher. LTC prices are currently trending inside the August 17 bear candlestick.

Technically, this is bearish from volume analysis. A sharp reversal and rally, ideally above $75, peeling back August 17 losses, might catalyze more demand, potentially setting the base for a relieving post-halving rally. 

If this is the case, August 17’s losses could be the climactic end of the leg down as LTC establishes a triple bottom at around the $60 and $65 support zone. Previously, LTC found support in this region in March 2023 and December 2022.

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Litecoin Hash Rate Steady Despite Dismal Price Action: Will This Change?

One week after the highly anticipated Litecoin halving event on August 2, on-chain data reveals that the network’s hash rate, a key measure of computing power channeled to the network, is steady but erratic.

As of August 9, trackers indicate that the Litecoin network’s hash rate is hovering around 760 TH/s, a notable decrease from the all-time peak of 816 TH/s recorded in late July 2023.

Litecoin Prices Steady But Lower, Rally Incoming?

Litecoin prices, on the other hand, are firm but down in the previous week of trading. CoinMarketCap data on August 9 shows that LTC is changing hands at $83, down 5% over the past week. What’s clear is that prices are moving tightly inside a consolidation range.

LTC price on August 9 days after Litecoin halving| Source: LTCUSDT on Binance, TradingView

Despite this dip, LTC is relatively resilient, up 17% from June 2023 lows. However, from a top-down preview, the coin is down 26% from the 2023 highs. In the medium term, LTC remains bullish since bears have failed to unwind gains posted from mid-June to mid-July 2023. Whether bulls will maintain control after halving, however, is also unclear.

If past performance guides, there is a glimmer of hope for bulls. The previous Litecoin halving in August 2019 was several months before LTC ripped to $400 in 2021. Even so, before this spike, LTC prices nearly halved from $66 to $35 in December 2019.

Unlike previous halvings, the crypto space has matured, and regulatory clarity has improved, particularly concerning Bitcoin—the foundational protocol from which Litecoin emerged. For instance, while most US regulators consider Bitcoin a commodity, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is cautious toward other altcoins.

Tracking On-Chain Metrics To Gauge Interest

Considering the above challenges and regulatory uncertainty, the interconnection between hash rate and spot prices is actively monitored. Litecoin relies on decentralized miners for security and transaction confirmation. 

The network’s security is evaluated via the hash rate metric, which risks crashing since miners must allocate more resources after the network halved rewards to 6.25 LTC. A potential price decline could trigger a corresponding reduction in hash rate, forcing the network to adjust the difficulty. 

How this evolves remains to be seen, and the network remains stable at spot rates. Besides the hash rate near all-time highs, the network’s activity seems unaffected. According to IntoTheBlock data, the network’s average growth is steady despite sentiment on LTC being generally negative.

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Litecoin Long-Term Holders Smartly Exited Before Halving, Data Shows

Data shows that Litecoin long-term holders exited the asset before the halving, while short-term holders were left to panic on the halving day. The “halving” here refers to an event where the block rewards of Litecoin are permanently cut in half.

Litecoin Long-Term Holders Sold During Price Surge Before The Halving

According to data from the market intelligence platform IntoTheBlock, the long-term holders had been well-prepared for the “sell the news” halving event. The “long-term holders” (LTHs) generally include all investors who have been holding onto their coins since at least six months ago.

Related Reading: These Bitcoin Metrics Are At Important Retests, Will Bullish Trend Prevail?

This group includes some of the most resolute investors in the Litecoin market, who don’t easily react to whatever is going in on in the wider sector, as they usually hold through FUD or profit-taking opportunities without participating in any significant selling.

Because of how rare movements from these investors can be, the few times that they do sell can be the ones to watch out for, as they may spell trouble for the market.

A way to gauge whether the LTHs are participating in selling or not is through the “holding time of transacted coins” metric, which tells us about the average amount of time that coins being transferred on the blockchain had been dormant prior to this movement.

When the value of this metric is high, it means that the age of coins being sold on the network is high, which can naturally be a sign that the LTHs are active right now. On the other hand, low values usually indicate that the short-term holders (STHs) are the ones selling currently.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the Litecoin holding time of transacted coins over the past few months:

Litecoin Long-Term Holders

As you can see in the above graph, the Litecoin holding time of transacted coins spiked back in June, when the price of the cryptocurrency had been observing a sharp rally.

During the largest of these spikes, the indicator’s value had exceeded 1 year, implying that some of the most experienced investors in the market had broken their silence.

This rally had occurred as the market had started getting hyped about the halving, which was only a month and a half away at that point.

This event takes place every four years, with the latest one having occurred just earlier this month. Unlike what some may have hoped for, the event didn’t prove to be bullish for LTC, as the aforementioned rally didn’t last for too long and the cryptocurrency only declined in the remaining leadup to the halving, until finally it actually sharply plunged on the day of the event itself.

It would appear that the experienced LTHs had already predicted something like this may happen, so they had taken the wise decision of selling while the opportunity was there.

In the post-halving selloff, the indicator’s value has remained low, implying that it’s only the short-term holders who have been panic selling after they saw that a bullish trend couldn’t return to Litecoin with the event.

LTC Price

At the time of writing, Litecoin is trading around $84, down 8% in the last week.

Litecoin Price Chart

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Litecoin Hashrate Taps New All-Time High, Will LTC Price Follow Suit?

The Litecoin hashrate has been going up steadily over the last year. This was mainly driven by the anticipation leading up to the Litecoin halving that was slated to take place in August. Now that the halving event has come and gone, the hashrate has risen to a new all-time high, but the question is, whether the price of LTC will follow suit.

Litecoin Hashrate Taps New ATH Of 1.03 PH/s

The steady rise in the Litecoin hashrate is a testament to the growing interest in the network. The hashrate points to the fact that there are more miners on the blockchain trying to guess the correct answers to each block. And this translates to better security overall for the Litecoin network.

Interestingly, this increase in hashrate has seen the network hit not only a new all-time high but a significant milestone. According to data from CoinWarz, the Litecoin hashrate rose as high as 1.03 pentahashes per second (PH/s) on August 4.

This means that for the first time, LTC’s hashrate has left the terahashes per second (TH/s) territory and crossed into the pentahashes per second (PH/s) territory. Although it is still a long way from Bitcoin’s exahashes per second (EH/s), it is a testament to how much the Litecoin network has grown.

The Litecoin hashrate has since retraced back into the TH/s territory, now sitting at 739.88 TH/s as of Monday, August 7. But a look over the last year’s hashrate chart shows that even this is a high level for the blockchain’s hashrate.

Litecoin hashrate

Will LTC’s Price Follow The Hashrate?

Since the Litecoin hashrate hit its new all-time high, the price of LTC has been more volatile than normal. This is not out of the ordinary though as the altcoin has been following the general market trend and LTC’s is a testament to that trend.

So far though, it doesn’t seem like LTC has made any effort to break out of this trend. If anything, it has suffered more declines than recoveries, even dipping to as low as $$80.65 on August 4. This decline shows that the new hashrate ATH has not moved investors to invest more in the coin.

For now, something that could lead to an uptrend for Litecoin’s price is if Bitcoin begins another rally and the crypto market starts to see improved sentiment. Otherwise, LTC will likely continue to toe the $82 line for the better part of the week.

At the time of writing, LTC price is trading at $82.80, down 0.47% in the last day and 11.67% in the last week.

Litecoin (LTC) price chart from Tradingview.com

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Litecoin Completes Halving, But Price Plunges 6%

Litecoin has completed its much-anticipated halving event today, but it seems the investors have reacted by participating in a selloff.

Litecoin Has Completed Its Third Halving, Block Rewards Now Down To 6.25 LTC

The “halving” event is where LTC’s block rewards are permanently cut in half. This event is periodic, occurring approximately every four years or roughly every 840,000 blocks miners hash.

Today’s halving was Litecoin’s third, meaning its block rewards have been cut three times since its genesis. In the first halving, the cryptocurrency saw its block rewards go from an initial 50 LTC to 25 LTC, and with the second, the tips dropped further to 12.5 LTC.

With the latest halving event, miners’ rewards for solving blocks have been cut down further to 6.25 LTC. The reason that halvings even exist is because they serve as a measure for controlling the asset’s inflation.

These block rewards that miners receive are the only way to introduce fresh tokens into the circulating supply, so cutting them down repeatedly makes sure that the cryptocurrency’s supply goes up slower and slower.

Eventually, when the halvings would keep on happening, the block rewards would approach zero. This would occur approximately in 2142. After this point, the asset’s supply will hit the maximum cap, and the miners will have to rely on transaction fees to pay off their running costs.

As halvings are important events, it’s natural that there has been a lot of discussion around this latest event as it has approached. During the start of July, the asset had observed a sharp rally towards the $114 mark, as the market had perhaps become hopeful for the halving, which was only one month away.

This rally, however, ran out of steam soon enough, and since then, LTC has struggled to put together any significant bullish momentum.

Litecoin Price Chart

Today’s halving hasn’t been able to change anything in this matter, either, as Litecoin has only plummeted further instead. It would appear that the event has indeed been a buy the rumor, sell the news type of scenario.

Following the latest plummet, Litecoin has gone below the $87 level and is down almost 7% during the past 24 hours. These high losses mean that LTC has been the poorest-performing coin out of the top cryptocurrencies by market cap in this period.

While the price performance of the asset might have been poor, LTC supporters may take solace in the fact that the asset has come forward a lot in terms of other network-related metrics since the previous halving, as data from IntoTheBlock shows:

Litecoin Comparison

Interestingly, the price at which both halvings happened was approximately the same. The cryptocurrency seems to have done well in terms of userbase and utility-related growth.

This impressive rise in adoption may be because Litecoin offers cheap and fast transactions compared to some other networks like Bitcoin. LTC investors can only hope, however, that this growth may also show up in the price.

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KuCoin Shuts Down Bitcoin And Litecoin Mining Pools Amid Market Turmoil

KuCoin, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has temporarily halted its KuCoin Pool service, effective August 15, 2023, until further notice. The move is part of KuCoin’s business strategy and aims to ensure the security and integrity of users’ assets.

KuCoin Urges Users To Backup Mining Records

During the suspension, users will retain complete access and control over their assets, and all other KuCoin offerings will remain operational as usual. 

However, users who are involved in cryptocurrency mining are advised to transition their Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) miners to alternative mining pools before the deadline to ensure uninterrupted earnings.

KuCoin has also advised users to back up and preserve their mining records and associated data before August 27, 2023, as failure to migrate to alternative mining pools within the specified timeline could affect their mining revenue. 

Nevertheless, KuCoin Pool will not be held accountable for any potential earnings lapses resulting from users’ failure to migrate to alternative pools.

The temporary suspension of KuCoin’s mining pools may cause some disruption in the crypto market, as mining plays an important role in the ecosystem. Despite this, it is worth noting that KuCoin is just one exchange, and its suspension may not have a significant impact on the overall market.

KuCoin has assured its users that the suspension is temporary, and the company is working on a new strategy for its mining pool service. The company has also emphasized that the security and integrity of users’ assets remain its top priority, and it will take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of users’ funds.

Litecoin Halving Triggers Price Drop

Litecoin, one of the oldest and most popular cryptocurrencies, has completed its third block reward halving at a block height of 2,520,000, as reported by Colin Wu. The halving event has cut the mining reward in half, from 12.5 LTC to 6.25 LTC, as part of the cryptocurrency’s deflationary monetary policy.

The halving is a regular event that occurs approximately every four years and is designed to control the rate at which new coins are minted. By reducing the reward for mining new blocks, the halving helps to prevent inflation and maintain the scarcity of the cryptocurrency.

The current price of Litecoin is $89.12, which represents a 3.8% decline over the past 24 hours and a 10% decline over the past six months. The price drop may be related to market uncertainty surrounding the halving event, as well as broader market conditions.

KuCoin

Despite the short-term price decline, many analysts remain optimistic about the long-term prospects for Litecoin and the cryptocurrency market as a whole. The halving event is seen as a positive development that highlights the ongoing maturation of the industry and the growing recognition of cryptocurrencies as a legitimate asset class.

Litecoin has a strong community and a dedicated development team, which continue to work on improving the technology and expanding the use cases for the cryptocurrency.

The halving event is expected to further strengthen Litecoin’s position as a leading cryptocurrency and contribute to its long-term growth and success.

Overall, the completion of Litecoin’s third block reward halving is a significant milestone for the cryptocurrency and the broader industry.

While short-term price volatility is to be expected, the long-term outlook for Litecoin and cryptocurrencies, in general, remains positive, with many experts predicting continued growth and adoption in the years to come.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView.com

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Sell The News? Litecoin Traders Capitulate Ahead Of Today’s Halving

On-chain data shows that Litecoin traders are showing signs of capitulation as the asset’s much-anticipated halving event is only a few hours away now.

Is Litecoin Halving A Buy The Rumor, Sell The News Event?

The “halving” here refers to a periodic event where Litecoin’s block rewards (that is, rewards that miners receive for mining blocks) are permanently cut down in half.

This event takes place approximately every four years and the next one, which would be the third, is scheduled to happen in around five hours if data from the mining platform NiceHash is to go by.

Litecoin Halving

This third halving event will reduce the cryptocurrency’s block rewards from 12.5 LTC to 6.25 LTC. Historically, these events have been important for the asset, as they mark points where the cryptocurrency’s production rate (which is nothing but the block rewards, as miners releasing these coins is the only way to mint new LTC) shrinks, and hence, the coin becomes more scarce.

As these halving events are so significant, the market naturally speculates around them, leading to the coin experiencing volatility. In a new tweet, the on-chain analytics firm Santiment has revealed how the traders have been behaving in anticipation of today’s Litecoin halving.

Litecoin On-Chain Metrics

In the above graph, Santiment has attached the data of two metrics related to LTC: “social dominance” and the “ratio of on-chain transaction volume in profit to loss.”

The former of these tells us what percentage of discussion on social media related to the 100 largest assets in the cryptocurrency sector is coming from Litecoin alone.

From the chart, it’s visible that this indicator has observed a large spike today, showing that investors are participating in a large number of discussions related to today’s halving.

The other indicator keeps track of the ratio between the profit-taking and loss-taking volumes on the network. As displayed in the graph, this metric has taken a plunge below the 1 mark recently.

The ratio being less than 1 implies that loss-taking is the dominant force on the market at the moment. The loss volume is not only more than the profit volume right now, but it’s actually outweighing it at a ratio of more than 2:1.

This extraordinary loss-taking may be coming from the investors who purchased coins ahead of the halving believing it to be a bullish event, but as Litecoin has only gone down lower recently, the holders have panicked and are selling at losses in an attempt to avoid going further underwater. The high social dominance of the asset may also likewise be because of FUD-related discussions blowing up.

Based on these signs, it’s possible that Litecoin may be going through a classic “buy the rumor, sell the news” event.

LTC Price

At the time of writing, Litecoin is trading around $91, up 1% in the last week.

Litecoin Price Chart

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Bullish Case For Litecoin Grows Stronger As LTC Halving Draws Close

Litecoin (LTC) is still trending low like the rest of the cryptocurrency market but one thing that separates the altcoin from the others is its obvious bullish case. Unlike the rest of the market, Litecoin looks set for another rally which will likely be propelled forward by the next halving.

Litecoin Halving Presents Bullish Scenario

Just like Bitcoin, the Litecoin halving happens every four years and cuts block rewards by 50%. The aim of this halving is to reduce the amount of new supply flowing into the market. And as demand rises, there is less supply to meet this demand, thus leading to scarcity and a surge in prices.

The next Litecoin halving is now around the corner with only about three months left to go. This halving, like the ones before it, carries the same promise of a rally for the digital asset. The last halving in 2019 saw LTC’s price bottom out around $62 and then rally to a local peak of $80 in the same month.

Litecoin halving

If this year’s halving stays true to this trend, then the digital asset should be seeing some upside in the coming months. This could result in LTC clearing the $100 level once more as investors prep for the next leg-up.

A 20% upside is attainable at this point, especially with the halving expected to happen in early August. So more than likely, the buyers will dominate the market for the next two months, leading to rising prices for Litecoin.

LTC Outlook For 2023

Presently, the crypto market is seeing muted momentum as investors remain indecisive. For Litecoin, the upcoming halving remains a bullish event but the prospects for the months following the halving event do not look good given historical performances.

Litecoin price chart from TradingView.com

After each halving, LTC has seen a reversal in sentiment following the initial surge and the subsequent crashes have been more brutal than the uptrends. For example in 2019, LTC’s price crashed almost 50% in the month of September, one month after the halving was completed. This was because the bull market was yet to begin and the cryptocurrency fell back into lockstep with the rest of the market again.

Going by this historical performance, it would seem the best time to take profits would be toward the end of August after the asset has rallied around 30%. The window of opportunity closes with the month of September which has historically been a bearish month for cryptocurrencies.

At the time of writing, LTC is trading at $87.11, up 3.22% in the last day.