Data shows the Litecoin mining hashrate has hit a brand new all-time high, can this signal be positive for the value of the crypto?
Litecoin Mining Hashrate Sets Latest All-Time High At 683.52 TH/s
Litecoin, very like Bitcoin, is a cryptocurrency that works on a consensus mechanism based on Proof-of-Work (PoW), meaning that network validators called miners handle the transactions on the network. These miners need to compete with one another using computing power to find a way to get a probability at hashing the following block on the blockchain.
The “mining hashrate” is an indicator that measures the full amount of this computing power that miners have connected to the Litecoin network for the aim of mining.
When the worth of this metric rises, it means miners are bringing more machines online on the network at once. This might suggest that miners are finding the blockchain attractive to mine on currently.
Alternatively, a decline implies some miners are disconnecting their rigs from the blockchain, possibly because they’re finding it unprofitable to mine the crypto for the time being.
Now, here’s a chart that shows the trend within the Litecoin mining hashrate over the past three months:
Looks just like the value of the metric has shot up in recent days | Source: CoinWarz
As displayed within the above graph, the Litecoin mining hashrate has seen some rapid increase recently and has set a brand new all-time high. Because of this miners have more power connected to the network than ever before at once.
More miners joining the network, or existing ones expanding their facilities, is usually a long-term bullish signal for the value, because it means miners imagine in the long run prospects of the crypto.
Though, an increase like this may also just be due to some miners migrating to LTC while prices are high, to reap the benefits of the upper profitability, because the asset is up around 27% through the past month.
In response to the newest surge within the hashrate, the Litecoin mining difficulty has also set a brand new all-time high, because the below chart shows.
The worth of the metric seems to have sharply risen | Source: CoinWarz
The problem is a feature of the network that controls how hard miners find it to hash blocks at once. Much like Bitcoin, the Litecoin network wants to maintain the speed at which miners hash latest blocks constant. But when the hashrate rises, miners develop into faster because of the additional computing power available and earn more rewards than intended.
The network then has to counter this modification by upping the problem simply enough in order that miners are slowed back all the way down to the usual rate. This is the reason the Litecoin difficulty has reached an ATH together with the hashrate now.
The upper difficulty now means smaller reward shares for everybody involved. It can be thus interesting to see whether some miners ditch the network now, or if the hashrate increase has truly come from validators establishing long-term operations.
LTC Price
On the time of writing, Litecoin is trading around $82.8, down 1% within the last week.
LTC observes decline | Source: LTCUSD on TradingView
Featured image from Kanchanara on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, CoinWarz.com