Litecoin’s Second Halving Cuts Miner Subsidy to 12.5 LTC

Litecoin’s second programmed subsidy reduction activated at block 1,680,000 on August 5, 2019, cutting the new-coin payment to miners from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC per block. Contemporaneous reporting placed the block at 10:16 UTC. The change was not a discretionary decision by a company or foundation: it followed the consensus schedule enforced by Litecoin nodes.

That distinction made the event consequential. A proof-of-work network pays miners with newly issued coins and transaction fees. At block 1,680,000, only the subsidy component changed; fees were not halved by the rule. The network therefore continued processing blocks under the same basic consensus system, while miners immediately received half as many new litecoins for a valid block.

A monetary rule executed on schedule

The Litecoin Core v0.17.1 tagged source tree set the main-network subsidy-halving interval at 840,000 blocks and targeted 2.5 minutes between blocks. Starting from the original 50 LTC subsidy, the first interval reduced it to 25 LTC and the second reduced it to 12.5 LTC. Reaching twice the interval—1,680,000—triggered the second reduction automatically.

At the target spacing, Litecoin would produce about 576 blocks in 24 hours. Multiplying that target count by the subsidy gives a gross issuance pace of roughly 14,400 LTC per day before the change and 7,200 LTC after it. Those figures are protocol-based estimates, not observed daily totals: actual production varies because block discovery is probabilistic, and transaction fees are excluded.

CoinMarketCap’s historical snapshot dated August 5 listed 62,978,181 LTC in circulation, a price of $96.83 and a market capitalization of $6.098 billion. It ranked Litecoin fifth under that provider’s snapshot methodology. The circulating figure was close to 75% of Litecoin’s 84 million-unit maximum, while the halving affected only the pace at which the remaining subsidy issuance would arrive. It did not remove any LTC already circulating.

The immediate pressure fell on miners

For miners, the first-order arithmetic was severe. A machine finding a block could claim 12.5 new LTC rather than 25 LTC, plus whatever transaction fees the block contained. Unless price, fee revenue, operating cost or the miner’s share of network hash power changed, subsidy revenue per successful block fell 50%.

A research note published under SEBA branding on August 2, 2019 argued that this direct profitability shock was clearer than any expected effect on price, fees or network hash rate. It warned that marginal operators could shut down or redirect equipment, while a subsequent difficulty adjustment could reduce the mining burden for those that remained. Those were scenarios, not established outcomes on August 5.

The design also separated predictable issuance from uncertain market response. Litecoin’s price briefly moved above $100 around the event and was near $98 in a Coinbase observation reported by The Block at 10:49 a.m. EDT. CoinMarketCap’s separate dated snapshot showed $96.83 and a 3.01% 24-hour gain. Because the observations use different venues, methodologies and timestamps, they do not establish that the halving caused the move.

What August 5 established

The verified result was narrower and more durable than the price narrative: Litecoin executed a publicly inspectable monetary-policy rule at a known block height. It halved prospective issuance and miner subsidy without halving existing balances, market capitalization or transaction fees. The longer-run response of miners, hash rate and price remained unknown on August 5, 2019, and could only be measured after the event.