[2017-12-20] Litecoin Founder Cashes Out, Sells Entire Stake After 9,300% Rally

[Samarkand]

Charlie Lee, the creator of the world’s fifth-biggest cryptocurrency, Litecoin, announced shortly after
midnight that he was cashing in his profits after a torrid, 9,300% rally in the past 12 months.
In a post on reddit, the San Francisco-based software engineer who founded litecoin in 2013,
said that he sold and donated all of his holdings over the past few days.

"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" Lee said in the post.

Lee explained that his liquidation was aimed at preventing a “conflict of interest” when
the creator of what is known as "Bitcoin Silver" makes comments on twitter about the
digital currency - something he tends to do with chronic zeal - that could influence its price, he said.
That said, Lee declined to comment in the post on how many coins he sold or at what price, and
asked readers to 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."

...

Full article at Zerohedge:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-20/litecoin-founder-cashes-out-sells-entire-stake-after-9300-rally


This seems sketchy to me. Litecoin´s bull run was only possible, because it was eventually added to
Coinbase - the company that Charlie Lee used to work for. After the Bitcoin Cash trading launch yesterday
at Coinbase it is becoming increasingly clear how shady Coinbase operates. Lee probably realized that
the current valuation for LTC is ridiculous, a 16 billion $ market cap for a cryptocurrency that is basically
only useful as a Bitcoin testnet.

[LuanX3]

Wow, the founder himself cashes out thinking that maybe someday his coin might die and lose value. Speaks great about the coin to be honest. If the father does not believe in his own child, who will or who should? I guess people still buying this coin should think twice since this is very troubling news. It is indeed still going up, but right now, people should cash out as well.

[Kemarit]

Its really sad to hear this news coming from the founder himself. I have so much respect with Charlie. I like this tweets a lot specially about the Chinese crackdown in the last couple of months. However, this announcement came into a surprise. How come the coin you have created and bring to life, you will just suddenly dump it cash it out and take the profits. This is not the first time that we heard the founder himself doing a graceful exit. But the timing is bad because Litecoin seems to gain a lot of renewed interest from the public. I'm sure that this announcement will really bring back Litecoin to its previous price of below $100 and it will just be a matter of time before it will died out. Sad to see that greed has taken over. Oh well, everyone is really for the money so its no exception that even the creator is not immune to it. Imagine Satoshi came back to life and dump all his bitcoins. LOL.

[DooMAD]

It does sound just a little implausible, heh.  If it were purely to resolve a conflict of interest, why wait?  He could have sold months ago.  But now that the price is soaring, he suddenly has a pang of conscience about it?  
Hmm....  

That said, fair play to him.  I've had my doubts about Litecoin over the years, but it has proven more steadfast and resilient than I gave it credit for.  People are taking it as this big symbolic gesture, but it's easy to read too much into these things.  It doesn't look like the market has taken too much notice so far.  It's not like he's crashing the economy or anything.  So yeah, why the hell not?  They were his funds, he can do what he wants with 'em.  Everyone likes to think they wouldn't be tempted if they were in that position, but I wonder how many would give in to the urge if they had the same opportunity.

[lotto-fan]

Loser he will cry when the price triples... but on the other hand, the main dev left would cause coin be abandoned, maybe not for litecoin as there are too many interests

[jhenfelipe]

He still has a LTC stored in physical coins, so he's not putting LTC into trash. I wonder how many physical coins he has, though. This news will surely cause doubt to some supporters who are holding LTC now so they will dump theirs, but might be a good news to others as well and see it as an opportunity to buy more. Anyway, he stated that he's not quitting Litecoin and will still spend his time working on it, so let's see what happen in the coming days.

[Egoitss]

First of all He is not looser and second of all he said that he don't want to price affect his decisions when they will be needed most. He is still BTC holder and as I understand many other coins as well.

[Benezim]

Charlie Lee is probably in a comfortable zone where he does not need to care about money in his life ever again. Doing what he did is a two edged sword though.

I believe he is one of the most honest guys in crypto and that he has all good intentions here (it's about his integrity). But then he probably should have waited communicating his move.

[jseverson]

I've always liked Charlie Lee, but wow. I see this as him conceding that Litecoin doesn't have a long term future. He cites conflict of interest, but as the founder, the coin's achievements will always be his achievements. His interest will always lie on its success. I doubt anybody ever said that he was pumping Litecoins for his own gain. It's his creation after all. I'd be wary if I were holding a large amount.

Could this be because of the Lightning Network? Honestly, if it works in theory with Bitcoin, it's going to render a lot of altcoins, including Litecoin obsolete. Litecoin only really has speed and cost going for it, and Bitcoin can potentially take that away.

[Lucius]

We can trust his statement or not,but the fact is that he sold all his LTC at a time when he thought the price reached the highest possible level.This does not mean that one day it will not invest again in LTC,or maybe he sell to invest in some other coin-that would be interesting.

It must be strange to read such news for the average investor in LTC,if founder is cash out it does not send a good message to holders or future investors.Despite that price of LTC is fairly stable around 330$ which is only some 40-45$ less than the highest prices this week.

[DooMAD]

Could this be because of the Lightning Network? Honestly, if it works in theory with Bitcoin, it's going to render a lot of altcoins, including Litecoin obsolete. Litecoin only really has speed and cost going for it, and Bitcoin can potentially take that away.

Lightning doesn't necessarily spell doom for altcoins.  If the altcoins in question also implement Lightning and Atomic Cross Chain Transfers become viable, people may utilise use off-chain transactions as a vehicle to reach other blockchains without relying on an exchange or other centralised controlling third party.  Lightcoin can still be the proverbial silver to Bitcoin’s gold for those who don't want to rely exclusively upon off-chain solutions.