As LTC prices keep climbing up for the last several days nearing its third halving, Litecoin gains more and more public attention. It has proven its worth many times, but it still often remains in the shadow of its main digital counterpart – Bitcoin.
Today, we will discuss the history of one of the oldest altcoins, dissect what’s happening with it now, and understand if LTC is a smart investment choice.
Litecoin: Basics and News
Created by Charlie Lee in 2011, Litecoin has since kept its status as one of the top-performing altcoins. Charlie created Litecoin in a very similar way to Bitcoin, making it a digital counterpart to the latter. Both have proof-of-work protocol in the core and a fixed supply along with the regular halvings.
What makes Litecoin different though is its speed, availability, and privacy. Primarily, Litecoin was created with a focus on increasing the transaction speed. That’s why LTC has a lowered block generation time of only 2.5 minutes compared to Bitcoin’s 10.
In terms of supply & demand, the BTC network is limited to 21 million coins, while LTC can offer 84 million coins. This, however, makes Bitcoin more valuable, resulting in its high market cap. Litecoin’s mining algorithm Scrypt makes it more accessible and less hardware-dependent than Bitcoin’s SHA-256.
When it comes to privacy, in 2022, Litecoin Foundation upgraded the network with the Mimble Wimble protocol. This upgrade cuts the transaction data and makes every LTC transaction completely anonymous. Despite the hassle with the regulators and several crypto exchange platforms, this basically turns Litecoin into a privacy coin.
LTC: What’s Happening With the Price?
In the last 24 hours (as of November 19th, 2022) LTC has become a top gainer. It recovered to the $65 mark with a 24-hour trading volume of $583 million, but the bulls haven’t reached any further yet. Still, traders foresee LTC moving upwards to the $70 mark.
Moreover, Litecoin has become the second most popular cryptocurrency in October being used for nearly 25% of all transactions. The only one who surpassed it was Bitcoin. The positive dynamics for LTC probably mean that Litecoin whales are preparing for the third halving and thus Litecoin’s price rally in 2023.
After-Halving Forecasts: Where Is LTC Headed?
The halving event is an implemented feature in Litecoin’s code that happens once every 4 years and is a part of the LTC Foundation’s monetary policy. Halving means that the reward for a block will be cut down in half, from 12.5 to 6.25 Litecoins.
This is the third Litecoin’s halving since its launch and it’s a highly anticipated event among investors and exchange platforms. As LTC has a limited supply, the halving event aims to solve the problem of limiting the supply and controlling the inflation rate.
Historically, Litecoin’s halving involves the LTC price pumping up before the event, but no drastic price jumps like the ones we saw after Bitcoin’s. However, history doesn’t always repeat itself, especially when it comes to the sphere of crypto.
The opinions differ as well, as Changelly foresees LTC to mark $87 after the halving, and Coin Price Forecast predicts $49 by the end of 2023. Still, when it comes to a long perspective, almost any forecasting platform expects LTC to rise and reach at least the $160-200 mark by 2033.
Is Litecoin a Smart Investment Choice?
As with any other crypto, nobody guarantees future gains with LTC, but if you read carefully, you could have noted the positive dynamics Litecoin moves towards. This altcoin is quick, secure, and doesn’t require much to mine. With its upcoming halving, you might be interested in investing affordable sums in it and benefiting from its recent pump. In case you don’t, you could always convert LTC to BTC with Godex or visit this page https://godex.io/exchange/bnb-to-avax to get familiar with another popular pair.