The price of Litecoin (LTC), a cryptocurrency often seen as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold, has been rising in the last few days, helping it reach a market cap of $8 billion and establish its position as the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
According to CryptoCompare data, litecoin is currently up by about 9.3% against the U.S. dollar in the last 24-hour period, as it’s currently trading at $129.1. In the last 30 days, LTC’s price rose 21%. The cryptocurrency is up over 300% so far this year.
The factor believed to be behind the cryptocurrency’s surge is its upcoming halvening event. Every 840,000 blocks, rewards on the Litecoin blockchain get cut in half. On August 6 of this year, block rewards will go from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC.
This decreases the cryptocurrency’s inflation and reminds its users that its supply is limited. This, in turn, can both see users start accumulating, and miners try to reap the most rewards as possible before rewards halve. Litecoin’s hashrate has, as a result, reached a new all-time high.
It’s also possible investors are betting on litecoin to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency space, thanks to its halving event.
Litecoin halving in 36 days while everyone is bearish on altcoins?
Recipe for a pump if you ask me.
I'm still waiting for the weekly close but if it does close anywhere above the green box/line I'll long targeting new highs.
One of the best looking altcoin charts out there. pic.twitter.com/3V4LMGiuIV— DonAlt (@CryptoDonAlt) June 29, 2019
The Litecoin Foundation, an organization supporting Litecoin’s adoption, is also sponsoring Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) matches, which could be bolstering the cryptocurrency’s adoption. It has also partnered with crypto-friendly accommodation booking platform Travala.
Most other cryptocurrencies are up in the last 4 hours, with BTC itself rising 1.2% in said period. Other cryptos, including BCH, XRP, EOS, and ETH are up between 1% and 3.5%, with the only altcoin beating litecoin’s performance being Chainlink (LINK).
Chainlink, as covered, has become one of the top performing cryptoasset of 2019, and its rise has been attributed to growing awareness of its importance for smart contracts that require secure and reliable middleware to connect it to real world data. It has partnered with companies like Google, Oracle, and SWIFT since July of 2017.
