In the first half of 2023, crypto impressed the world as one of the top-performing assets. Despite its success, the industry remains in its infancy, with a history spanning just over a decade. High volatility is a defining characteristic of the crypto market. The wild price swings create challenges for miners, which destabilize cash flows and hinder their efforts to expand and optimize mining operations.

Along with the introduction of ASIC miners, the global BTC mining industry’s hashrate scale has continued to expand, resulting in fierce competition. In crypto mining, electricity cost is a key concern among miners.

Bitcoin’s performance has been closely watched since the crypto was launched in 2009. As it can process only seven transactions per second, the network does not allow for scalable smart contracts. The SegWit upgrade increased Bitcoin’s block size limit to 4MB (1MB for transaction data and 3MB for witness data); however, the limitation still persists.

Despite the bearish trend, certain innovative PoW coins have not stopped shining. Kaspa, for instance, surged by over a hundredfold in just a year and now ranks among the top 50 cryptos by market cap.

Litecoin just had its third halving, which marks another crypto milestone. As one of the earliest crypto projects, LTC is recognized as “the lite version of Bitcoin” thanks to its superior throughput, faster transactions, and lower fees. Litecoin creator Charlie Lee modeled the LTC halving, a major feature of the coin, after the underlying design of Bitcoin.

As one of the earliest cryptocurrencies, Litecoin has always been a key player in the industry. This coin once again captured the spotlight this June as it became one of the four cryptocurrencies supported by EDX Markets. This, coupled with the upcoming halving, has helped Litecoin record exceptional performance in the first half of 2023. By the end of Q2, the LTC price surged by an impressive 54.29%, peaking at $113. Despite a slight dip in July, LTC has grown more than 29% in value so far this year, outperforming many other assets, including gold.

For the crypto industry, every BTC halving marks a feast, especially during the first three halving cycles of Bitcoin, where the market witnessed astonishing price surges by dozens of times. Despite short-term corrections, the market consistently rebounded later, leading to long-term bullish trends.

Among the numerous cryptocurrency projects, Bitcoin is in the limelight as the industry leader, and Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin trading have become popular topics.

As the initial excitement surrounding BRC-20 tokens begins to fade, the total market cap of these tokens has plummeted by more than 70% to approximately $300 million, from its peak of over $1 billion in May. Prominent tokens in this sector, including ORDI and PEPE, have also witnessed substantial price drops as the hype subsides.

Litecoin founder Charlie Lee once referred to Litecoin as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold and emphasized that Litecoin is his preferred choice for payments. Today, Litecoin has become one of the preferred options for most crypto users.

Kaspa has been described as a rare innovative project in the field of PoW, and indeed it is. As the first project to adopt Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology, Kaspa allows for parallel blocks and instant transaction confirmation, which is a significant departure from traditional blockchain.

Gold had been used as a form of currency since the dawn of civilization. Throughout human history, it has always been recognized as one of the most precious metals. Silver, another precious metal, has played similar roles. Thanks to their scarcity, durability, and ability to hedge against inflation, gold and silver are regarded as an excellent portfolio for hedging and investment. In the emerging field of crypto finance, Bitcoin and Litecoin, two of the oldest cryptos, are considered the digital equivalent of gold and silver by crypto enthusiasts.

From 2016 to 2023, ViaBTC has gone through seven years of ups and downs in the constantly evolving crypto industry. We have witnessed the industry's rapid growth and celebrated its moments of glory; and we have also endured the painful days when users left the market in flocks. Throughout these seven years, ViaBTC has received widespread acclaim within the industry. Behind all of the achievements lie the dedication and hard work of every team member, as well as the unwavering trust and support from our users.

In 2008, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the then fourth-largest bank in the United States, sparked a global financial crisis and imposed immense pressure on the global economy. This incident also exposed the vulnerability of the modern financial system. With the in-depth development of the Internet at that time, Satoshi Nakamoto proposed a revolutionary concept called Bitcoin, which gave birth to a novel financial technology system based on code. It also changed the life trajectory of Haipo Yang, the founder of ViaBTC.

To introduce more crypto enthusiasts to Litecoin, ViaBTC held an online seminar on June 16, 2023, via their official Twitter account. The seminar brought together many insiders, including Keith Yong from the Litecoin Foundation, Dmitry Gomon and Arthur from Hiveon, Shan Belew from Litecoin OG, and Paphy Cai from ViaBTC. The discussion revolved around the theme of “Litecoin Halving: History, Trends, Challenges and Opportunities”.

As part of the 7th anniversary celebration, ViaBTC has prepared three parties with the theme “Play to Earn More Than $7777.” Users will receive a reward for completing the tasks under each party.

After Ethereum shifted away from PoW through the Merge, for a while, GPU mining had become leaderless. While coins forked from Ethereum can still be mined with GPUs, most miners are skeptical about their future prospects. Following the Merge, the ETC hashrate only grew by 100 TH/s, while Ethereum boasted a network hashrate of 850 TH/s prior to the Merge. A significant portion of the GPU hashing power was lost.

Despite that, a few pools continue to pursue innovation, adapt to changes, and achieve large-scale and specialized operations, thus establishing a firm foothold in the market and recording sustained growth. ViaBTC, founded in June 2016, is well aware of what it takes for a pool to succeed. Over the years, the pool has perfected its products to deliver the best mining services and introduced a wide range of innovative tools, earning the recognition of global miners.

Following Ethereum’s transition to PoS in 2022, many in the industry believed that PoS would become the mainstream trend for crypto, and voices against PoW grew louder. To everyone’s surprise, however, with the boom of the Ordinals protocol and BRC-20 in 2023, the PoW ecosystem has thrived.

June is a special month for ViaBTC as it marks its anniversary, a time to give back to its users. To celebrate its 7th anniversary, the pool has launched a one-month “Ready for More” celebration featuring a series of exciting events, providing users with more benefits and opportunities.