Litecoin halving to shut down unprofitable miners: Charlie Lee

Charlie Lee, the founder of the fourth largest cryptocurrency Litecoin (LTC) in his latest comments on the impending halving says that some miners will find it unprofitable to miner LTC and eventually shut down.

Lee was speaking during an interview with Australian crypto news site Mickey on July 10 where he said that the reduction in rewards is “always kind of a shock to the system.” He explained:

“When the mining rewards get cut in half, some miners will not be profitable and they will shut off their machine. If a big percentage does that, then blocks will slow down for some time. For litecoin it’s three and a half days before the next change, so possibly like seven days of slower blocks, and then after that, the difficulty will readjust and everything will be fine.”

Being a speculative market, investors are currently buying LTC ahead of the event. This is because Litecoin history shows significant growth in price in the weeks following the halving event. Lee shared his view on how this buying actually leads to an appreciation in the value of LTC.

“In terms of the price, the halvening should be priced in because everyone knows about it since the beginning. But the thing is people kind of expect the price to go up. So a lot of people are buying in because they expect the price to go up and that’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, because they’re buying in, the price does actually go up.”