Has Litecoin hashrate bottomed?

The past few months have been painful for the cryptocurrency market, with Bitcoin falling more than 50% from its all-time high of $14,000 and Litecoin falling more than 66% from the recent August halving. As a result, the network hash rate has similarly decreased from a peak of 500 TH/s to the current 150 TH/s (-77%).

According to data from BitInfoCharts, Litecoin hashrate is currently exactly the same as it was last December, which many believe was the ultimate bottom of this market cycle. The market price back then was half what it is now, but with mining rewards cut in half, it makes perfect sense why hashrate is where it is now. The question now is whether we will make lower lows or if we will see a strong rebound and form a double bottom.

Hashrate is not a reliable indicator of price movements since it follows rather than leads in this respect, but some speculate that it is a strong indicator, especially given the recent downturn seen in the market.

As the network’s hash rate and security continue to decline, concerns have spread that this will make Litecoin more vulnerable to 51% attacks. An attacker could allow a malicious actor to take control of a large portion of the network and force changes to the network. . However, considering that Litecoin is the king of Scrypt, the algorithm used for mining, this possibility is very unlikely. Anyone trying to attack it would have to pay a large cost that would not be economically viable and would have no chance of making anything. From such attacks.

Mining pools may appear to be single entities, but individuals can move in and out of the pool freely behaving maliciously, so even with hash rates this low, there is little to no incentive to attack the network. Of course, that assumes they can start from scratch. According to current data from Nicehash, the largest marketplace for hash power rentals, there is only ~2-5 TH/s of Scrypt mining power available for rent, or about 3% of the currently active network.

Litecoin Community Member and Moderator’TheHoliestRoger‘ shared some of his insights via telegram.

“I know many people who have stopped mining LTC because it is no longer profitable. Almost everyone simply turned off their miners, some put them on eBay, and very few people started mining shitcoins. In my opinion, the hashrate off is well distributed and not controlled by a single entity. One thing to watch out for is the scrypt hashrate available for rent from miningrigrentals or nicehash for example. From what I can see, we’re not even close to 51% yet.”