Litecoin Hashrate Skyrockets amid Rumors of Next-Gen Miner Availability

By CCN: Litecoin may not be immune to today’s crypto market sell-off, but the No. 5 cryptocurrency has been one of the leaders of 2019. In addition to the crypto market’s expanding value, the hashrate – which is a reflection of computing power dedicated to the network – has also been on the rise.

Source: BitInfoCharts.com

Litecoin’s Hashrate Reaches an All-Time High

Once again, Litecoin has been a standout, with its hashrate achieving a new all-time high, according to Litecoin Foundation Director Franklyn Richards in a recent blog post. While other coins are gaining value alongside LTC, only the fifth-biggest cryptocurrency has reached a new hashrate peak. Bitcoin was close but no cigar now that some consolidation is taking place in the BTC price. Other top coins including privacy coin Monero (XMR) have seen their hashrates fall dramatically, which Richards suggests could be a “potential flagging in longer-term market confidence.”

Litecoin’s bullish hashrate may be a result of a new Litecoin miner becoming available, the Antminer L5. According to the LitecoinTalk forum, the latest generation miner is now available for rent on BitDeer, a computing power-sharing platform. This drummed up some curiosity on the forum.

The L5 Miner Could Be a Game-Changer

BitDeer is a partner with China-based cryptocurrency mining leader Bitmain. While the L5 availability hasn’t been confirmed, Richards says in his blog post that the L5 is “indeed a real thing and is currently being deployed by Bitmain and their mining farms which would include BitDeer.” He goes on to say that the L5 miner has since been taken down from the BitDeer website.

The forum member with the username “nehgekim” says they have been using it and experiencing great results, fueled in part by the rising Litecoin price.

“The mining contracts I have purchased from Bitdeer that use the L5 have performed better than expected thanks to the lift in the LTC price. Sub 5c electric is available but the even there the price of LTC totally needs to trend up for all this to keep being worth anything.”

Richards analyzed the performance specs, saying:

“The stats provided show quite a drastic improvement over the previous generation L3++ more than doubling the hashrate output from 580 MH/s. Perhaps this is why the L4 name is being skipped altogether. It’s certainly not as powerful as Innosilicon’s A6+ however it does appear to be more efficient putting it in a good position for when it does finally retail to the public.”

The Litecoin halvening event, in which the block mining reward will fall from 25 to 12.5 LTC, is planned for Aug. 6. Based on historical performance, the halvening event is typically bullish for the Litecoin price because it is considered a positive for LTC economics. While it should naturally lead to a slashing of the hashrate, Richards expects L5 features including greater efficiency could offset the fact that the rate being cut in half.