Litecoin (LTC), one of the oldest and most prominent cryptocurrencies, has set a new milestone for network performance. Litecoin's hashrate is now far above PetaHash, with a new all-time high of 1.31 PH/s.
Hashrate is a measurement of the computing power used to secure and process transactions on a blockchain network. A higher hashrate indicates that the network is more secure and resistant to attacks and that more miners are participating in it.
Miners are the nodes on the blockchain that validate transactions and create new blocks. They are compensated with newly minted coins and transaction fees.
Litecoin, which launched in 2011 as a fork of Bitcoin, utilizes a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus with some variations. Litecoin, like Bitcoin, has a finite supply, with the maximum amount of coins ever created being 84 million LTC. Currently, 74 million are in circulation, leaving about 120 years to mine the remainder.
Litecoin touts itself as the largest global Scrypt-based network, having operated with 100% uptime since 2011, securing and transacting billions of dollars of value.
In another astounding milestone, Litecoin announced in a Jan. 26 tweet that the network has processed over 16 million transactions so far in 2024.
Litecoin price action
Litecoin has traded in a broad range since its price stalled after its most recent halving in 2023. Attempts by the bulls to break out of this range have been rebuffed by bears near the $75 to $80 region.
Bulls remain in a persistent battle but face a more stringent task in the very short term.
Litecoin is faced with a near-term barrier at the daily MA 50 of $70.12, which is currently constraining its price. Litecoin advanced in its price in today's trading session, but bulls could not go past this level.
At the time of writing, LTC was down 0.82% in the last 24 hours to $67.72.