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LTC has lost more than half of its value in the past few months, despite the most recent market price increases. Its blockchain hash rate, on the other hand, has been on a steady uptrend depicting the resilience of network participants in the face of tremendous volatility in the broader market.
Litecoin Hash Rate on the Path to Recovery
According to data from BitInfoCharts, Litecoin’s mining hash rate increased to 397 Th/s on February 1st. The last time the figures were this high was back in August 2019. Despite undergoing a mild retracement a week later, the numbers are still hovering around this level. Besides, further data also suggested that the network’s latest difficulty level was also adjusted to 13.53 million, a level last seen in August 2019.
It is important to note that the network hash rate declined sharply to 170 Th/s in June 2021, just a month after hitting an almost two-year high of 384 Th/s. This came amid the all-out crypto ban in China.
Since then, both hash rate and difficulty have been on a steady uptrend in tandem price recovery, even though the latter’s trajectory wasn’t as smooth. In fact, the plunge that unwrapped in the last week of January this year also failed to deter the overall hash rate trend, demonstrating a more robust network.
The major culprit for the initial fall was undoubtedly the second halving. Litecoin’s hash rate and difficulty went on a freefall since the mining reward network halving in July 2019.
It soon fell out of favor with investors, and it took sixteen months from the event for the silver coin to reach a price of three figures. However, Litecoin mining became more profitable throughout 2020 and remained on approximately the same level in the early months of 2021. The latest recovery was a bullish factor as network volatility continued to wreak havoc.
MimbleWimble Update
Even as most regulators worldwide have blatantly snubbed anonymity-fostering protocols, Litecoin is moving ahead with privacy opt-ins with the release of MimbeWimble (MWEB) upgrade after two years of development. It first started when the Beam Privacy team announced an interesting implementation of MWEB as Extensions Blocks (EB) into the Litecoin network in December 2019.
Experts hold a bullish view on this upgrade. According to the lead developer David Burkett, the update in question aims to enhance the viability of Litecoin as a fungible currency for daily transactions, paying salaries, and even buying real estate.
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