Founder of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, sells all his LTC. Buy the Charlie dip?

in #litecoin7 years ago

Holders of Litecoin woke up this morning to some bad news: LTC is down another 10%+ as of this writing and the coin's public face, founder Charlie Lee, just announced that he sold or donated all of his holdings. Although we assume Lee had very substantial holdings of LTC, it is not clear that the selling activity around his coins was behind the price drop seen over the last two days, although the tumble today could certainly be partly in reaction to Lee's post. Lee says he sold his LTC in "the past days" and over the last week we've seen the price of LTC mostly on the upswing. Lee announced the move on r/litecoin in the early hours of this morning, saying that he no longer feels comfortable being an advocate (and sometimes contrarian) for Litecoin while his financial status depends so much on the coin's price.

From Lee's post (entire post below): "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."

Meanwhile, as the price of LTC falls, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is soaring - now up over 100% the last 2 days.

Why on Earth would anyone accuse Lee of shorting LTC?

Ok, sorry to spoil the party, but I need to reign in the excitement a bit...

Buying LTC is extremely risky. I expect us to have a multi-year bear market like the one we just had where LTC dropped 90% in value ($48 to $4). So if you can't handle LTC dropping to $20, don't buy! 😀

— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) December 11, 2017

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Original reddit post:

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 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.

UPDATE: 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.

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Hi Nathan,
(I made it here, yay!)
I think after the dust settles, LTC might make a bounce back.
It's a good coin to utilize for exchanges, yes? That's what I've read, but I am a newbie, so I have more questions than answers at this time.
Cheers!

The reason I love LTC is that it is so easy to transact with compared to other coins. It also is the only coin I know of that is already set up for the Lightning network (instant no-fee transactions) and atomic swaps (instant swapping into other crypto). Some are saying BCH is going to become the dominant coin for transfers but I still think the community and technology for LTC make it very attractive. I'm a buyer and HODLer.

I am reviewing the various exchanges out there and I am not sure how my coins will travel to and fro, Bittrex is not accepting new accounts, and well, after what happened at Coinbase last night, I am going to have to do more research. I have time because I am waiting for the hard wallet, I'm not making one single transaction without one. After all of that has been worked out, I will buy LTC because I think it will be a good coin to invest in. I remember a few weeks ago, you suggested on air for viewers to consider buying BitCash, nice call! I hope you took your own advice. :)

I feel Charlie Lee should have declared the amount of LTC he was holding and planning to sell,and issued a wallet address so people could see amount of coins he was transferring,he is of course the founder.cheers

Nathan, you are doing a fantastic job. Keep up the good work.