The price of litecoin (LTC), a cryptocurrency created back in 2011 that’s often seen as the silver to bitcoin’s gold, has been outperforming most other cryptocurrencies so far this year, as its halving vent is fast approaching.

According to CryptoCompare data, LTC is currently trading at $103 after rising 4.1% in the last 24-hour period, and over 42% over the last 30 days. The cryptocurrency has even been outperforming BTC, which has been facing resistance at the $8,000 mark.

Litecoin's 30-day performance

At press time, most other cryptocurrencies are up by less than 1%, with EOS, ETH, and Binance’s BNB being up by 1.09%, 1.6%, and 2.8% respectively. BNB’s price has been moving up after the exchange teased the rollout of margin trading.

What’s behind litecoin’s strong performance isn’t yet clear, although some analysts speculate its halving event is behind it. On LTC’s network the halving event occurs every 840,000 blocks and this one is set to bee block rewards drop from 25 LTC to 12.5 LTC.

These events essentially decrease inflation and remind users that the supply of cryptocurrencies like litecoin is limited. As a result the cryptocurrency’s price often goes up before the event, as its scarcity increases demand.

Litecoin’s halving event is expected to occur on August 6 of this year, meaning it’ll occur in about 72 days.

It’s even possible that investors looking to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency space are just betting on litecoin because of the upcoming halving event, as these events are often preceded by bull runs. Historically, bitcoin’s price has increased before every halving event, for example.

There could be other factors involved, however. The Litecoin Foundation has been sponsoring Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) matches since late last year to increase cryptocurrency adoption, and it has recently partnered with leading crypto-friendly accommodation booking platform Travala to help increase adoption of cryptos for payments.

Recently, a litecoin user paid a 200 LTC transaction fee, worth over $20,000, to move less than $1,000 in a single transaction. While the move appears to have been accidental, some have speculated it could have been made by miners laundering money.