Bloomberg Touts Litecoin As This Years Highest Cryptocurrency Performer

The financial media outlet, Bloomberg, published an article which notices Litecoin’s stellar performance so far in 2019:

This year’s top-performing cryptocurrency is up more than threefold and you’ve likely never heard of it.

Litecoin, which has gained more than 330% since the beginning of the year, is outpacing all its crypto peers, including Ether and XRP, as well as the best-known and largest token Bitcoin. It has a market cap of about $8.4 billion, making it the seventh-largest digital asset, according to data compiled by Mosaic Research Ltd.

The rally can partly be attributed to Litecoin’s upcoming halving (also known as halvening), whereby the number of coins awarded to so-called miners is slashed by 50%. The idea is that a cut in supply will not only drive up its price but will also prevent an erosion of value. Miners currently receive 25 new Litecoins per block, but following the halving — which is expected to fall on Aug. 6 — they will receive 12.5.

Halving typically happens roughly every four years and the run-up to it has, in the past, coincided with a rally in the underlying tokens. Four years ago, when the last Litecoin halving occurred, the coin gained about 60% in the three months beforehand, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com. And the phenomenon isn’t isolated to Litecoin, either — Bitcoin is set to undergo its next halving in May 2020 and its biggest proponents are already seizing on the drop in supply as a catalyst for further gains.

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