The block rewards on the Litecoin blockchain have recently halved to 12.5 LTC per block, in a halving event that seemingly went by without any incidents.

Reacting to it cryptocurrency enthusiasts are seemingly showing they’re bullish on LTC, as the cryptocurrency’s price started surging higher after block 168,000 was produced on the cryptocurrency’s network with a block reward of 12.5 LTC.

As the cryptocurrency’s creator Charlie Lee pointed out in a subsequent tweet, miners haven’t turned off their equipment before or during the halving, but instead pushed forward to help the mining rate of its blocks to 1.4 minutes on average, much faster than the expected 2.5 minutes.

Responding to commenters however, Lee noted Litecoin’s difficulty changes every three and a half days on average, and as such we’ll have more conclusive data on how the halving affected the cryptocurrency’s hashrate later this week.

Once blocks stabilize at 2.5 minutes, this means 576 new blocks are produced on the Litecoin blockchain every 24 hours. This means the network will have 7,200 LTC entering the market a day. Before the halving, 14,400 LTC entered the market on a daily basis.

Miners are expected to have a rough time in the next few weeks, as it’ll be harder to generate enough LTC to cover energy costs and remain profitable. A miner profit index from F2Pool shows that while some miners are currently still profitable, older models like the Antminer L3+ are no longer worth keeping.

While it isn’t yet clear how healthy the network will remain after the halving, it’s clear the market is bullish on the cryptocurrency. CryptoCompare data shows LTC’s price surged right after the first block with a 12.5 LTC reward was mined, and the cryptocurrency has gone up by nearly 12% in the last 24-hour period.

Litecoin jumped after halving

This surge helped Litecoin cross the $100 mark and get closer to its 2019 high of a little over $140, which it hit in June before correction to less than $80. In January the cryptocurrency was trading at around $30.