Litecoin has seen a big drop in price, but what has caused this negative fall? It all started after Litecoin (LTC) underwent its halving event on August 5. The event took place at a block height of 1,680,000. Unfortunately, the price of Litecoin started decreasing almost immediately. An LTC dust attack on Binance compounded the problem.
What’s a dust attack?
According to Binance Academy:
“A dust attack refers to a relatively new kind of malicious activity where hackers and scammers try and break the privacy of [Litecoin] and cryptocurrency users by sending tiny amounts of coins to their personal wallets. The transactional activity of these wallets is then tracked down by the attackers, who perform a combined analysis of several addresses as an attempt to identify the person or company behind each wallet.”
However, according to analysts, the downward trend may soon be corrected since Litecoin is among cryptocurrencies that are approaching the basic support level. Therefore, after hitting this level, Litecoin may be able to recover and exceed the 25 percent it had lost after halving. Notably, the price has started recording positive gains.
Litecoin has already gained 7 percent
LTC has recorded roughly a 7 percent increase to exchange hands at $78.09 from a low of $ 71. Surprisingly, Litecoin’s price drop came at a time when the crypto community had anticipated that its halving would boost its price. While this may have dampened the morale of many LTC traders, the phenomenon is part of cryptocurrency markets’ uncertainty.
Luckily, even in the midst of conflicting views from LTC supporters, some hold the opinion that Litecoin is well on its course.
For instance, a Twitter user noted:
“Let’s assume for a moment that the price of Litecoin is actually not a scam. [Also], in a way, let’s assume that crypto Twitter for the first time is incredibly wrong. An objective chart shows that in a falling wedge, the bedrock supports Litecoin. This is the biggest opportunity.”
Apart from the halving event, the dust attack on Litecoin may have negatively affected the price of Litecoin.
On August 9, roughly four days after halving, Binance tweeted:
“Approximately 5 hours ago there was a large-scale dusting attack on LTC users.” another Twitter user added, “…dusting attack against Binance [LTC users] affected 294,582 addresses.”
After the hackers/scammer sent the small amounts of LTCs, they then attempted to corner the wallet’s owner with data about their wallet. Fortunately, the scheme only went through if the receiver of the dust was quick to initiate a transfer.
However, although the connection between LTC’s downward price movement and the dust attack is not yet clear, it’s impact may have played a role.
No one hates free LTCs
While some LTC holders were happy to receive the free coins, some were worried and requested Binance to educate them on “the next course of action” and what users “need to do.”
In a purported response, Binance indicated that the dust distributions:
“Maybe related to LTC’s efforts to upgrade accounts on the network from Epoch 0 to Epoch 1 and the funds are likely coming from the project team.”