Bitcoin Forum

Announcing the Litecoin Foundation's physical Litecoin project.


The Litecoin Foundation was formed in 2012 to help protect and promote Litecoin. In this spirit we are going to make physical Litecoin affordable for everyone.


The Litecoin Foundation has loaned 25,000 LTC to fund the physical Litecoin project. The physical Litecoin project will be organized and managed by Chaang-Noi a.k.a Goat.

Hi All,

I have been a long time supporter of physical crypto and I am a strong supporter of Mike Caldwell's (Casascius) physical Bitcoins. I hold a significant amount and own at least one of every coin he has made. I think his efforts have done well for BTC and we would like to do the same for LTC. Since we are pretty much going to be copying his work, I just wanted to give credit to where it was due.

In order to promote LTC I and a few other key LTC supporters feel that an affordable physical Litecoin should be available to the community. We will be doing this project at cost, it will not be for profit. That means you will be able to get the lowest priced physical LTC that can be made.

For example we expect to be able to make the base 1 oz silver coins with the holograms for less than $35. Our goal will be $30 or less. This means the base silver coin and hologram will cost the buyer only 13 LTC or less, plus the face value of the coin.

We will be minting 1/10th, ½, and 1oz .999 fine silver rounds with different denominations. We will also be selling an especially low cost item with no metal (think credit card) for the absolute lowest cost physical LTC. This will be made in the range of 1 to 1000 LTC for the easiest and cheapest way to transport LTC physically.

We have the funding and we have our suppliers set up, all we need from the community is for you to tell us exactly what you want. We think we have a pretty good idea but if we can improve on anything Mike has done please let us know.

Also are you an artist? Want to design a coin or card? Please contact me A.S.A.P.

We are not taking preorders, you can not reserve orders at this time, and we expect to be shipping in 2 to 3 months. We will only be accepting LTC as payment. Also prices are subject to change and will match our real costs.

Thank you all for your support.

reserved.

Sounds good I love physical coins!  I would be after both the half and full ounce rounds for sure.

Make the half Oz in - 1-10 LTC

Full Oz in 25, 50, 75, 100 LTC

Sounds good, I loved the "affordable for everyone" part ;D

great idea

Because of the cost of the die we will have to limit the option's of the face value of the coin. If we are able to produce in significant numbers we will be able to make more.

We do hope to have several runs with different designs but our priority is to make this affordable.

Thanks.

 

Cool thing! Watching now!

I hope you will annonce more soon!

subscribed to this thread.   im a silver bullion coin collector already so. also i love cold storage of my litecoins.  i tend to spend them on gpu's if they stay in my wallet too long.  litecoin has some pretty cool logos already! do it up! now would be a good time to commission some silver as its cheap. takes a while to get things minted tho :(.  oh well good luck im sure i'll sign up!
 

That's a cool project

Interesting project!

The 1/10th oz silver coins might be too small, its probably better to have at least 1/4th oz or 7.5g like the planned lealana/casascius coins.

Also I'd like to see a non-silver coin (made of nickel or sth silver looking?) nominated with 1 LTC but with a decent size. (Like the 1 BTC Brass coins).

sounds good. hope you come up with a nice design. hope the first batch also comes with a "misprint" of the hologram  ;)

watching

I would be interested in a 100oz LTC silver bar

LOL

to everyone who bought the third party LTC coins.

This at least has a somewhat tied connection to the coin.

Interested & following.

Awesome, I'm definitely going to pick some up :)

this sounds good


as always how do you know the private key is only in the coin

and all other copy's of the private key have been destroyed.

That is always a very good question when dealing with physical coins. Trust is a huge issue here. To be honest we are trying very hard to come up with a process that is safer and more securer than the traditional way that requires trust. However at this time we do not have anything set up.

We have also thought about having someone extremely trusted in the community to crate the keys and sticker for us but right now nothing has been worked out.

I am very open to other ideas.

Thank you.

liked!

Hi Goat,

Congratulations on your project!  Looking forward to purchasing each.

Coincidentally :) in response to requests from the community (and some rather assertive demands) we'll also be joining in the effort to support the community of Bitcoin and alternate cryptocurrencies with physical precious metal pieces.
Ours are significantly different than what you propose, and are complementary, and so not in competition.

Formal announcement and display of the first strike mintings will be next week, announced at OHM2013 conference in the Netherlands, but this will be followed by announcements here and an exclusive offering for collectors.

Our offering is foremost intended to be "pocket-friendly" and permanently useful transactionally rather than making use of a one-time security hologram, so a different market focus.

Having been in the minting and precious metals business for quite some time, we are happy to offer any advice or expertise in evaluating designs, production and supply partners and assist you in your efforts as you like.  If you are seeking to reduce costs, we can surely assist with that as evidenced by our pieces being consistently offered at premiums far below others.  (Though those that buy ours tend to mark them up greatly on eBay and elsewhere).

Be interested in knowing the planned country of manufactor?

Odds are the silver will be minted in the USA.

The keys will odds are be made in the USA as well.

Thanks.

Good luck Goat,

I think Smoothie's prices are outrageous, so perhaps I will buy a physical Litecoin here instead. I am looking forward to seeing the designs! Let me know if I can be of any more help.

Take it easy,

Ch

Yea, this sounds much better than smoothies, his prices are just retarded, plus its not set up or run well at all, I truly feel bad for those who bought from him...

 I will get some of these, these will be the real physical litecoins.

i liked smoothies coins very well and he was first and had alot of work and no, i dont get a penny from him.

of course it could be cheaper and i prefer this but deleeting my last post is not a good first sign for a "Foundation", isnt it?  ::)

You can talk about Smoothies coins here in this thread, however please stay polite and on topic.

Sounds good  :D

How about you work with a redeem code? You add a code that can be redeemed at a site, where you also enter your wallet address. When the code is redeemed the coins are sent to the address of the user. If a code was already redeemed, you can use the logs to find out what happened.

Or am I missing something here?

Nobody ever heard of the Litecoin Foundation, I really don't see what makes this less of a third party than Smoothie.
And which tied connection to the coin are you talking about?

I'll watch this and if they can provide the quality Smoothie provides, I'll definitely buy some. But your reasoning really doesn't make sense.

Litecoinfoundation.org should not have any credibility in the community or at least there is no reason to trust us. The only other public act we have ever done was donate 2,000 LTC to the Litecoin Project a.k.a The LTC dev team. We are looking for a solution where we do not need to be trusted at all but so far we lack a plan.

We are working on getting a very high level of quality but still keeping the cost reasonable. Our coin will not be a copy of anything on the market.  I think what it will come down to in the end is personal taste on what coin design one likes best.

Actually the litecoin foundation is not associated with the litecoin dev team. So they are technically not '1st party' coins.

That is true.

The Litcoin Foundation has made a no strings attached 2,000 LTC donation to The Litecoin Project (dev team) but other than that, we are not connected in any way.

However with crypto there really is no such thing as a "1st party" coin. In the end we will have to trust someone. If you guys can figure out a way we can do this with out any trust needed that would be awesome.

Thanks.

It really is a misrepresenation of who and what you are....

Good luck but please state it cleary who you are and stop the bullshit about smoothie's coins are un-official which is so NOT TRUE !!

Start this the right way and for the right reasons ...so far this is not the best of starts !

I support anybody who adds value to Litecoin !

There is no such thing as "official or un-official" coins. I have never made this claim.

I have nothing against other people making physical Litecoins, I respect the free market.  However this thread is not about other people and what they might be doing.

Please stay on topic.

As a coin collector, and maker, the more the merrier!  It would be awesome to have a lower cost piece.  Just that alone could make it more likely to circulate.  I love that potential.  Also I'm aware of the work that can go into a piece, as well as the shortcuts available.  There is a lot of room in the physical crypto coin space.  I hope to contribute to that as much as possible and am open to working with anyone that is interested in improving the available offerings.

One of my first fascinations with coins came as a child.  I had a whole bunch of coins from all over the world and I would engage my childlike mind for hours on end making up stories of the people that would have used the coin and what they could have bought with it.  Weaving tales of how it came into my possession through the years of circulation was a delightful bit of creativity that also led me to research much more of the world  than many of my peers in childhood.

The same can be done with the block chains, and the localization of IP addressing and imagining where and who might have used the coins, and for what.  My adult mind also engages destroying the imagined and uses block chain links for forensic fact finding when called to do so, but I would be a fool if I didn't acknowledge the origin of this fascination.

Exciting times, both numismatically as well as for Bitcoin and Litecoin.

They do https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,5223.0.html

Please try to keep on topic. There will be a thread about the Litecoin Foundation soon. If you do not want to wait, please make your own thread. Thank you.

Any more news on these physical litecoins?

Design on the silver has been done and should be pretty awesome. There is something about it that will make it pretty tamper resistant.

We are just now finalizing the design on the hologram.

This has taken a bit longer than expected however we want to have the highest quality and we want to get it right from the start.

Thanks.

Looking forward to it.

Good news!

Watching with interest!

Can't wait to see these  ;D

It is very exciting to be sure...  With each new problem, it inspires inventive folks rise to the challenges.

Cool, I'm really looking forward for these ones

Goat,
Any updates for us on these coins?!?!

The coins and the holograms have been ordered. We need to wait until they both come in then hopefully shortly after that we can start selling.

We are working on a coin that will hold BTC as well and also have the new security measure that will be found in the Litecoin version.

Pretty interesting stuff if it all works out :)

I will update when I can.

i would like to suggest that when there is a conference with litecoin holders at a conference that we start a new tradition buy playing for chickens with the Looping Louie game which actually has tokens with chickens on them (people would be able to buy chickens for LTC to play)

perhaps there could be a raffle for 1 physical coin to all participants

http://www.mrtoys.com.au/user/7309919/upload/images/lg/MAW_4504.png

the game also goes well with drinking, but we could seperate into drinking and non-drinking groups

This is so random and off topic but i love it.

Im sure this could work out. Lets make a new thread for the details ;)

Any updates? Lol it's been a while

The delay is in the manufacturing of the coin. The new thing we want to do has never been done and really their timeline has not ever been kept. Sadly I can not mint these by myself and my hands are tied.

The rest of the stuff is more or less ready to go.


I really really hope this is done by Christmas

Hi did the physical coins ever get made? if so is there any left I know Im late to the party but Im just getting in to crypto coins I already have a coin collection dating back to the 18th century (English GBP) and thought a futuristic one would be a good edition is there a link to a site or is it to late and I have to risk ebay?

Still designing/making the dies for them to be minted. This is sadly a part of the project I cant do myself.

The certificates and holograms are done and waiting, the silver has been purchased.

Hope to get them out soon.


Thx

I am excited for an affordable physical Litecoin.

I do believe the Lealana coins are absolutely gorgeous, but I am also a business owner, and I know what price gouging is.  There's an unspoken markup above wholesale that's considered ethical.  There's a pretty big gray area as well.  But those coins are above and beyond all the gray area, even.  Super disappointing because they are gorgeous with that silver/blue look.  So icy cool :)  

Hope these will be both affordable and beautiful.  

So its been over 6 months already?

-B-

The hard part, the dies look like they will all be at the mint tomorrow assuming all goes well.

This project is alive and yes, our goal will be to make this coin economical.

Our certificates will be hand printed and really look awesome. Hopefully the coins will match!

I don't know about that. I thought about minting my own physical coins and the prices from mints were pretty far above "spot". To get a price anywhere close to "spot" required a purchase of a really enormous amount of precious metal up front and a commitment to a large number of coins. At that point the business plan of a physical litecoin/bitcoin company becomes more precious metal speculation and less minting coins, because the value of your stock can fluctuate so dramatically while you're waiting to sell them.

That said- I do have to question the wisdom of loaning the project 25,000LTC to get this done. That's a lot of money. Personally I would imaging that money better spent doing something like getting a working payment processor going, or a litecoin version of blockchain. But thats just me I guess.....

I'm looking forward to seeing it!

Yes, other things are good too:)   Who is to say these are not being worked on as well?

The payment processor issue is not a technical one, but a legal one. Every time a new ruling comes out on crypto we get to pay lawyers to redo what they have done. Fun stuff. Trying to operate legally in the USA is almost economically unfeasible.

Still nothing on this?  I am curious whether it's even a good idea to use precious metal; that's like printing money on money. It becomes confusing at that point to track the value of the medium on top of the crypto value.

Why not use regular metal coins similar to the ones seen on this site: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Physical-Litecoin-LTC-Collectable-Real-Digital-Coins-Like-Bitcoin-s-little-brother-Round1-Troy-999-Silver/1020505_1620607103.html

We've been using coins like that in the Air Force forever as just simple tokens to be collected. Many of them are of very high quality.

The coins themselves need not be of valuable material in order to serve this purpose. That gives the illusion that the coins are dual purpose and the really shouldn't be. If you want to own silver bullion, buy silver bullion and keep it 'til the apocalypse or hand it down to the next generation.

The only reason I haven't designed my own coin and sent it to be made by a company like makecoins.com is because I wouldn't want them having possession of the secret key. I am looking for other methods. Any guidance?

It doesn't surprise me that Goat has taken this long to get an actual product out.

When he initially penned his first post in this thread it was right after we had a heated discussion in PMs back at the end of July 2013.

Simply put: we do not like each other.

That is okay with me as I was not put on this planet to be friends with everyone.

But I can't help but look back and think his attempt to sell "not-for-profit" physical litecoins and think he posted this thread and intentions to make physical litecoins as an attempt to garner a reaction from me or in other words "troll me". As of today he hasn't produced the coins he claimed he is/was making, as far I am aware. At least they were not ever released on this forum or the litecointalk forum.

I support competition in the physical cryptocoin world as I believe it is healthy, but what I do not support is leading people on to believe you will make a product in a particular timeline and then not meet that timeline at all and also claim they are "not-for-profit" coins and then disregard questions about the legality of the so called "Litecoin Foundation".

Maybe Goat will actually finish his coin project. Hopefully he does. But to date it isn't surprising that nothing has manifested itself in a physical form available to the public.

Note: The link you posted of the coins you mentioned are copies of my coin design and have the misleading notion that they are made of 999 Fine silver and weren't. I'm not 100% sure this is the same thing happening here but one of those pictures is of the same two sided coin that was not made of actual silver yet had the writing "1 troy oz 999 Fine Silver".

I would only buy my coins from Smoothie , sucks that you don't make them anymore.

Looks like the one-year anniversary of this thread is coming up tomorrow and thus far...

No coins, no designs, no holograms, no proof, nothing but talk. Is anyone actually surprised that Goat's LTC coins never materialized? It isn't surprising to me. But I must admit it is funny though.  ;D ;D ;D

Over a year has passed since this announcement and still Goat has failed to deliver on his supposed "not-for-profit" physical litecoins.

At least it can be known that Goat has shown no proof that his efforts in this supposed project were genuine as there is no design, holograms, certificates, and most importantly no coins.

This thread was created the day after Goat and I had a supposed disagreement in PMs on this forum which confirms my suspicions that this thread was an attempt to troll me and in essence gave false hope to other prospective coin buyers that they would have an alternative in the near future from the time the thread was started.

Promise after promise was made and none were ever kept. Now Goat has been banned from the forums for going off the deep end and has been accused by multiple parties that he owes them a substantial amount of BTC that he refuses to pay (which was debt from his previously failed businesses/stocks/etc.).

Now he has gone rogue and his trust has plummeted since he has been gone.

This should not come as a surprise as Goat has always been a shady character on these forums.

 ::)

This isn't goat's fault, its mine.  I'm too much a perfectionist with these things.
I have prototypes, and much of the work toward this done, but am way behind on most everything I've committed to and this is no exception.

Thank you for apologizing. But last I remembered that goat was the one touting this project on this forum and the LTC forum claiming they were not for profit physical litecoins and he was out in charge of it.

From public knowledge, goat was in charge of this project and he touted it as such.

When questioned about the public info about a not-for-profit organization on the LTC forums he never answered those concerns.

Me and goat had it out for a while and in the end it appears he was shady and based on user claims he is refusing to pay his debts even after they were confirmed by theymos about the claims and the validity of it.

I'm sure goat is a good guy in some people's eyes but to me he has been quite questionable given his past business practices and involvements.

Just because you do right most of the time and some of the time you do very shady questionable things, does not absolve someone of those wrong doings. I've always called a spade a spade on this forum, as such, nothing is different here.

Can we see the prototypes?