Halving is a term which is really common in cryptocurrency
Halving is a term which is really common in cryptocurrency mining. Basically, this is the process that sees the reduction of mining rewards of digital currencies to 50%.
Litecoin, which runs on the same base code as that of Bitcoin, halves its mining rewards every four years.
The next halving of the Litecoin network is anticipated to take place on August 5th, 2019. Below are the statistics that miners need to keep in mind before the next halving:
At the time of writing –
Total Litecoins in circulation: 60,338,800
Total Litecoins to ever be produced: 84,000,000
Percentage of total Litecoins mined: 71.83%
Total Litecoins left to mine: 23,661,200
Total Litecoins left to mine until next block-half: 2,661,200
Reward-Drop ETA date: 06 Aug 2019 23:14:39
You May Also Read: How Long Does It To Mine 1 Litecoin (LTC)?
Details of the first Litecoin Halving
The first ever Litecoin halving happened on August 25th, 2015, when the network reached 840,000 blocks, which takes roughly 4 years to reach.
When Litecoin reached 840,000 blocks, Litecoin halved its rewards for mining blocks and started rewarding miners 25 coins rather than the original 50 new coins for solving a block.
When the first halving happened, Litecoin was trading at a rate of 1 LTC to $3 from where it has come a long way since.
The total Litecoins mined when the first block reward halving took place was 42 million and has continued since then, however, when the next halving happens, there will be 21 million more LTC mined.
Litecoin Foundation explained that the halving process is not anticipated to happen only once, but the process would be repeated after every 4 years as in Bitcoin.
There were a number of concerns about the first Litecoin halving as it didn’t bring any remarkable rise in its value.
However, Litecoin lived through the much-dreaded mining process, while experiencing more growth in the long run than it did before the halving took place.
You May Also Read: How Many Litecoins Can You Mine In a Day?
Reason for the Litecoin Halving
The high cost of specialized mining equipment as well as constant electricity bills miners incur, one would certainly think that halving block rewards would stop the miners from consequently reducing the difficulty in mining of the digital assets.
One major reason that Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies halve their block rewards is for keeping the activities of miners in check as the cryptocurrency grows over time.
Though the income of miners falls by 50% whenever halving takes place, the inflation of the cryptocurrency from the time of the last halving to the next balances out.
Some analysts have even predicted that Litecoin would record major growth after it halves its block rewards again, where there are others who see the coin declining.
However, there is no cutout way to actually predict what will take place after Litecoin halves its block in 2019, but we do know that Litecoin will continue to be used after the process.
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