Charlie Lee, who created the cryptocurrency litecoin in 2011, introduced on Tuesday night time that he has offered off all his litecoin with a view to keep away from accusations of something untoward.
The transfer got here proper after Coinbase added bitcoin cash to its platform (and to GDAX, its separate institutional trade) and was swiftly accused of insider trading as a result of the value of bitcoin money soared a couple of hours earlier than Coinbase’s announcement. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong introduced in a blog post that Coinbase will examine whether or not any of its workers engaged in insider buying and selling with their information that the positioning could be including bitcoin money.
Charlie Lee is the previous director of engineering at Coinbase. He left the corporate this 12 months to concentrate on litecoin full-time. In a post on Reddit late on Tuesday night, he wrote (bolding ours):
“Each time I tweet about Litecoin value and even simply good or dangerous information, I get accused of doing it for private profit. Some individuals even suppose I quick LTC! So in a way, it’s battle of curiosity for me to carry LTC and tweet about it as a result of I’ve a lot affect. I’ve all the time shunned shopping for/promoting LTC earlier than or after my main tweets, however that is one thing solely I do know. And there’ll all the time be a doubt on whether or not any of my actions have been to additional my very own private wealth… Because of this, previously days, I’ve offered and donated all my LTC. Litecoin has been superb for me financially, so I’m properly off sufficient that I now not have to tie my monetary success to Litecoin’s success. For the primary time in 6+ years, I now not personal a single LTC that’s not saved in a bodily Litecoin. (I do have a couple of of these as collectibles.) That is positively a bizarre feeling, but additionally one way or the other refreshing. Don’t fear. I’m not quitting Litecoin. I’ll nonetheless spend all my time engaged on Litecoin.”
Lee added that he wrote the Reddit put up “earlier than the Bcash on GDAX/Coinbase fiasco.”
He didn’t reveal what number of cash he offered or how a lot he made, however mentioned, “I can inform you that the quantity of cash was a small share of GDAX’s every day quantity and it didn’t crash the market.”
At 3 a.m. EST, Lee once more tweeted out his Reddit put up and added, “Satoshi Nakamoto, your transfer.” Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym that the unique creator (or creators) of bitcoin utilized in 2009, and a few worry that Satoshi nonetheless holds an enormous quantity of bitcoin and will crash the market in the event that they unloaded .
Litecoin is constructed off bitcoin’s supply code, and like bitcoin, operates on a blockchain. Lee has mentioned he supposed litecoin to be the silver to bitcoin’s gold.
However there are a few technical differences between litecoin and bitcoin: litecoin’s community is quicker than the bitcoin blockchain (mining a “block” of litecoin transactions takes a median 2.5 minutes in comparison with bitcoin’s 10 minutes); litecoin transaction charges are decrease; and litecoin has a provide cap of 84 million cash, in comparison with bitcoin’s 21 million.
Litecoin is up greater than 7,000% in 2017 via Dec. 20.
Disclosure: The creator owns 1 litecoin, bought in 2016 for reporting functions.
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Daniel Roberts covers bitcoin and blockchain at Yahoo Finance. Comply with him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.
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