Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin’s 10 Years History. Part Five: Conflict Of Interest
October 15 2021 - 6:14AM
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It’s great that the founder decided to give us one more chapter of
Litecoin‘s story. Let’s tie up loose ends and wrap this whole
series with a bow on top. As it turns out, Charlie Lee returned to
his job at Coinbase. Was the company more supportive this time
around? Plus, as we warned you last time, at one point Lee sold all
of his LTC. What were his reasons to do that? Did he have a plan?
And, more importantly, did the plan work? Related Reading |
Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin’s 10 Years History. Part Two:
Exchanges + Betrayal Learn all of that and more in the concluding
chapter of this legendary saga. Charlie Lee Vs. Coinbase, Round Two
After successfully activating SegWit on Litecoin, Lee returned to
his job at Coinbase. Ever the pioneer, this time around he worked
from home. The year was 2016. Once again, “given how successful the
Ethereum launch was,” Charlie Lee tried to get Litecoin listed on
Coinbase. “Brian reluctantly agreed to launch on GDAX only.” The
predecessor to Coinbase Pro, GDAX stands for Global Digital Asset
Exchange. The launch didn’t go as Lee hoped. Because there was no
launch. “For reasons unknown to me, Brian & Fred refused to do
a full launch on GDAX & Coinbase like we did with ETH.” Even
though Charlie Lee helped design ETH’s launch, which was a
moneymaker for the company. To make things worse, “Fred had refused
to let Coinbase hold any LTC and due to conflict of interest.”
Which, if you think about it, might be the reason Charlie Lee is
looking for. Besides, a conflict of interest serves as a link to
today’s main story. Since the exchange had no Litecoin liquidity,
Charlie “had to personally lend Coinbase my own LTC.” As the
following chart shows, Litecoin was the #4 coin at the time. It
“almost matched Etheruem’s and LTC wasn’t even on Coinbase.” Was
this a personal attack or does the conflict of interest narrative
rings true to you? It would have been easy to launch on both GDAX
and Coinbase. Actually, it would have been easier since we already
have a successful launch plan to follow. Coinbase basically had to
go out of the way to cripple the Litecoin launch and not even hold
any LTC to pay for miner fees. — Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October
12, 2021 So, Charlie resigned. The company asked him to stay a
while to ease the transition. A few months later, with nothing to
lose, Lee shot his last shot to try to get Litecoin listed on
Coinbase’s main site. Surprisingly, Brian Armstrong agreed.
This was definitely not a staged tweet and reply. I actually didn't
expect Brian to reply at all, but I was extremely glad to see him
agree with me. So right away, I gathered the team together at
Coinbase to launch Litecoin. I didn't even talk to Brian after his
Twitter reply. — Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 12, 2021
Litecoin officially launched on Coinbase in May. On June 9th, Lee
left the company for good. Today's my last day at @coinbase! I will
miss working with you all. I'm going to shift my focus to Litecoin
now. To the moon! 😁 pic.twitter.com/Ys9dZwtTFO — Charlie Lee
(@SatoshiLite) June 10, 2017 The move was extremely successful. Lee
estimates that Litecoin made Coinbase over $100M through that first
year. “Brain even emailed to apologize for what I had to go
through. He agreed that adding Litecoin was super lucrative for
Coinbase.” Even though that happened, in his Twitter thread Charlie
went for the jugular. “I guess you can blame me for turning
Coinbase into a sh*tcoin casino that it is today.” Savage! LTC
price chart for 10/15/2021 on Exmo | Source: LTC/USD on
TradingView.com The Founder Sells All Of His Litecoin The story you
were waiting for. At the end of 2017, Charlie Lee sold all of his
Litecoin. At the market top. In the thread, he doesn’t mention a
conflict of interest, but that was the reason he wielded at the
time. Nowadays, Lee says that because of the fair launch, he didn’t
have that much LTC. He had to mine and buy his share, like
everybody else. He also says that “Pretty much every other
altcoin had a huge premine. Even Ethereum had like 70% coins
premined.” According to the founder, these were his objectives:
Remove the fear of a Satoshi stash Make Litecoin more decentralized
Align my motivation/incentive to Litecoin adoption versus LTC price
rise At the time, the move was controversial, to say the least.
People assumed the captain was abandoning the ship. At the market
top. However, Charlie Lee has spent four years leading the project,
focused on Litecoin adoption and “not on the price of LTC.” Since
then, they launched LTCpay, “a self-hosted merchant processing
service,” and credit card backed by Litecoin. And they hosted a
“Global Litecoin Summit” in September 2018. Plus, they
sponsored a UFC night and became “the Official Cryptocurrency of
the Miami Dolphins.” for a while in 2019. By the end of 2020,
PayPal announced Litecoin support. “PayPal did not reach out to me
beforehand. Actual there’s no reason they needed to! Litecoin is a
decentralized cryptocurrency after all. It was honestly very
satisfying to see this happen.“ Related Reading | Charlie Lee Sums
Up Litecoin ‘s 10 Years History. Part Three: SegWit Intro Charlie
Lee’s new project for Litecoin is fungibility. Read all about it in
this thread. This new feature is almost done,”The code is being
audited right now, and we are very close to releasing it. After
release, it will take some time for it to be activated.” Lee
expects this to happen in early 2022. The author finished his epic
thread with these two heartfelt tweets. The blockchain for all
intents and purposes is alive. I cannot shut it down and I know
Litecoin will outlive me. These 10 years have been a wild ride.
Here's to 10 more. 🥂 It's amazing what Satoshi Nakamoto has
created. I am privileged to have played a tiny part in all of this.
pic.twitter.com/1Zks4QzZbU — Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 12,
2021 Congratulations on your 10th anniversary, Litecoin! Featured
Image: Litecoin 10 years from this tweet | Charts by TradingView
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