- Litecoin successfully goes through its third halving event.
- LTC extends its dip contrary to the bullish expectations around the halving.
The highly anticipated Litcoin halving is finally completed and it is rather anticlimactic. This is because there were heavy expectations regarding the event based on what it does for LTC’s scarcity.
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Before we get into the details, it is important to understand the core concept behind halvings. It happens when the block rewards issued for transaction validation in a proof-of-work network are slashed by half.
In Litecoin’s case, the halving will reduce the amount of LTC released in circulation after every four years. Doing so will lower the impact of inflation on LTC while maintaining a low supply.
Litecoin’s price action during previous halvings reveals something interesting
The aforementioned changes underscore one of the main reasons for the bullish expectations that have prevailed recently. Unfortunately, LTC’s actual performance in the days leading up to Litecoin’s latest halving has been rather underwhelming. However, this is not surprising, especially from a historic perspective.
A trip down memory lane revealed that Litecoin’s previous halving events in 2015 and 2019 did not yield much of an impact on its price action. In 2019 the price continued dipping days after the halving, A confirmation that the halving barely influenced the price.
Meanwhile, IntoTheBlock just released a comparison of some of the key metrics comparing the state of Litecoin in 2019 versus 2023.
Happy halving day @litecoin! Let’s compare some key metrics to the last halving in 2019. What do you notice?????#LITECOINHALVING #LTC #Litecoin pic.twitter.com/V9wneIZkRS
— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) August 2, 2023
LTC bears prevail amid a successful halving
Interestingly, LTC’s price action maintained a similar outcome. One would anticipate a bullish outcome given the importance of the halving and the hype around it but that was not the case.
Instead, LTC extended the bearish performance that has prevailed since the start of July. LTC exchanged hands at $87.59 after dipping by 6.7% in the last 24 hours.
Source: TradingView
As far as on-chain observations were concerned, we saw a bit of an uptick in the total open interest in USD. But the most notable change was the surge in social volume especially in the last 24 hours, soaring to a monthly high.
Despite this social volume surge, on-chain volume only managed a slight uptick.
Source: Santiment
Read about Litecoin’s price predition for 2023/2024
Assessing LTC’s buy or sell pressure revealed that there was a slight uptick in realized cap in the last two days. This reflected the prevailing sell pressure as observed in the last 24 hours, which means short-term profit-taking was still active.
On the other hand, the mean coin age has been ascending steadily for the last four weeks.
Source: Santiment
The ascending mean coin age confirmed that there was a healthy amount of hodling going on in the LTC community despite the unfavorable price action.