Charlie Lee, the creator of cryprocurrency Litecoin (LTC), announced Tuesday that he has now sold or donated all his Litecoin to avoid accusations of him profiting from the LTC news he announces.
In the Litecoin forum of the Reddit website, Lee wrote the following post titled “Litecoin price, tweets, and conflict of interest“:
Over the past year, I try to stay away from price related tweets, but it’s hard because price is such an important aspect of Litecoin growth. And whenever I tweet about Litecoin price or even just good or bads (sic) news, I get accused of doing it for personal benefit. Some people even think I short LTC!
So in a sense, it is conflict of interest for me to hold LTC and tweet about it because I have so much influence. I have always refrained from buying/selling LTC before or after my major tweets, but this is something only I know. And there will always be a doubt on whether any of my actions were to further my own personal wealth above the success of Litecoin and crypto-currency in general.
For this reason, in the past days, I have sold and donated all my LTC.
Litecoin has been very good for me financially, so I am well off enough that I no longer need to tie my financial success to Litecoin’s success. For the first time in 6+ years, I no longer own a single LTC that’s not stored in a physical Litecoin. (I do have a few of those as collectibles.) This is definitely a weird feeling, but also somehow refreshing.
Don’t worry. I’m not quitting Litecoin. I will still spend all my time working on Litecoin. When Litecoin succeeds, I will still be rewarded in lots of different ways, just not directly via ownership of coins. I now believe this is the best way for me to continue to oversee Litecoin’s growth.
Please don’t ask me how many coins I sold or at what price. I can tell you that the amount of coins was a small percentage of GDAX’s daily volume and it did not crash the market.
He later updated the post, after some people speculated his announcement was aimed at promoting another cryptocoin, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), by writing:
“I wrote the above before the recent Bcash on GDAX/Coinbase fiasco. As you can see, some people even think I’m pumping Bcash for my personal benefit. It seems like I just can’t win.“
The “fiasco” Lee referred to related to the Bitcoin Cash’s volatility the day it started trading on GDAX and Coinbase temporarily halting Bitcoin Cash sales over concerns of insider trading.
In a subsequent Twitter, Lee stated he has sold his Bitcoin Cash coins now as well.
To those saying I bought BCH with insider news, please stop. I had no info. I sold all the BCH I can the moment it was tradable on exchanges. And j just sold my 2 stuck BCH on Coinbase at $5000 each. Good riddance!
— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) December 20, 2017
After selling all his Litecoin to remove any speculation about conflict of interest, Lee posted some of what’s being developed for Litecoin in 2018, including a merchant processor, popular online wallet, a Goods trading platform, and “one huge unexpected surprise.”
The Litecoin team has been hard at work working with companies to support Litecoin. Nothing to announce yet, but here's what's in the works:
Merchant processor
Popular online wallet
Goods trading platform
One huge unexpected surprise. ?2018 will be a good year for Litecoin!
— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) December 20, 2017
You can follow Charlie Lee on Twitter @SatoshiLite.
Read the full Reddit thread from his above post at Reddit.com.
Photo: BTCkeychain (cc)
