Litecoin shows no price reaction as it approaches halving – why?

admin

Aug 2

Litecoin's third halving event was due to take place in less than nine hours.
The event, however, appeared priced in as buyers shun LTC.

With the blockchain's third halving in its 12-year period of existing less than 350 blocks away, Litecoin [LTC] hashrate has rallied to an all-time high, per data from CoinWarz.

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At press time, the network's hashrate stood at 786.50 TH/s. When a blockchain's hashrate climbs in such a manner, it means that the network is more secure and stable and will become more difficult for malicious actors to infiltrate.

Once the halving is implemented, miners' block reward is expected to be reduced from the current 12.5 LTC to 6.25 LTC.

With a cut in the coin's supply through the halving event and an expected increase in demand, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee believes that LTC's price would rally. Lee, in a Twitter spaces event held last week, noted:

"If the supply side gets cut in half and the demand stays the same, then the price should go up."

Easy tiger, LTC might have other plans

There remains an ongoing uncertainty on whether the halving event would impact LTC's price positively. Some investors argue that the information about the upcoming halving is general knowledge. Therefore, it has been priced in.

This means that the current traders and investors in the market have already considered that the block reward will be reduced and have moved accordingly. Hence, the halving event may not necessarily lead to immediate price surges.

Another category of investors shares Lee's optimistic viewpoint. They opine that since the event will lead to a reduction in LTC's supply, if demand for the altcoin increases or remains stable, LTC's value might experience an uptick. This was because there will be less LTC available to buy from, hence the price growth.

At press time, the coin traded at $92.37. Despite the widely known anticipation of the upcoming halving event over the past month, the coin's value has failed to see any positive reaction. Per data from CoinMarketCap, the coin's value has declined by 16% in the past 30 days.

Source: CoinMarketCap

An assessment of the coin's on-chain activity revealed a decline in network activity during the 1-month period. Per data from Santiment, the count of daily active addresses that trade LTC has trended downward. On a 30-day moving average, this has fallen by 27%.

Read about Litecoin's price prediction for 2023/2024

Although many people expect the demand for LTC to increase as the halving event approaches, on-chain data suggests that this might not be the case as the coin's transaction count continues to dwindle. Per Santiment, the number of transactions involving LTC has fallen by 36% in the last month.

Source: Santiment

Lastly, LTC remained undervalued at press time with a Market Value to Realised Value (MVRV) ratio of 0.511%. This indicated that if all holders sold the coin at its current price, they were sure to book less than 1% gains.