Litecoin is seeing increased network activity ahead of the halving

Litecoin is seeing increased network activity ahead of the halving

Litecoin is scheduled to have its third mining reward halving in early August. After that, the reward paid to miners per block will be reduced by 50% from 12.5 LTC to 6.25 LTC. Ahead, the 12th largest crypto asset by market value has managed to make some big gains recently, pushing its price to $92.58.

Several on-chain metrics have also performed positively.

Litecoin network activity

Data from IntoTheBlock suggests Litecoin had a strong month. Since the end of April, the total number of addresses with a balance has “increased sharply”. There are currently 8.5 million LTC addresses with balances as of last week.

Litecoin had a strong month. The total number of addresses with a balance has increased more since the end of April and we are now observing nearly 8.5 million LTC addresses with a balance! #Litecoin https://t.co/beYBnYLzm8 pic.twitter.com/seMsdiJEup

— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) May 30, 2023

Both the number of new and active addresses are close to the new all-time highs set in February this year. In fact, the number of new addresses created on the Litecoin network briefly exceeded the number of new Bitcoin addresses.

Santiment, a crypto analytics platform, recently stated that if the trend of increased on-chain volume continues, it will be a strong sign that some major players are starting to dip into their LTC investments in anticipation of the halving.

“The LTC20 halving on August 10th will be a significant event for the Litecoin network. Most experts believe that the event will have a positive impact on the price of Litecoin and we would agree with this belief.”

Litecoin’s hash rate was also constant. After a few minor dips, computing power dedicated to the blockchain increased by more than 24% from 573 TH/s at the beginning of the year to the current value of 712 TH/s. Close to the hash rate is the mining difficulty, which was 25.12 million hashes.

Increased OI for Litecoin futures

The upcoming halving event has also impacted Litecoin's futures derivatives contracts, which surged by more than $420 million globally - resulting in over 20% year-to-date growth, according to data compiled by Coinglass.

As a result, open interest in Litecoin futures has risen to its highest level since the beginning of last year. Open interest refers to the number of outstanding derivative contracts

.