Some people don’t need to be introduced, but communication with them brings a lot of useful and interesting information. And today we would like to tell you about the AMA session with our friendCharlie Lee. The AMA took place on January 12 and our guestwasCharlie Lee, creator of Litecoin, cryptocurrency Enthusiast, ex-Director of Engineering at Coinbase, Managing Director of the Litecoin Foundation.
The total reward pool was 500$ and has been splitted in 3 parts.
In this AMA Recap we will try to summarise the most interesting points for you.
Part 1?—?introduction and questions from the Telegram&Bitcointalk community
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Hi everyone
Serg | Satoshi Club: Hello to everyone! We are pleased to announce our guest today: @coblee (Charlie Lee) Welcome to Satoshi Club!
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: welcome @coblee. We’re glad you took the time to join us today
Charlie Lee: Hey guys. Happy to be here.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Looking forward to a cool AMA
How are you today? What part of the day is for you?
Charlie Lee: it’s 10am
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Sorry we made you wake up so early
Serg | Satoshi Club: I am curious, have you ever done an AMA on Telegram before?
Charlie Lee: yes, a few times
Serg | Satoshi Club: some people actually wake up at 7–8 AM, not like us
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Really?
Serg | Satoshi Club: Usually we ask for an introduction from our guests but I think you don’t need any intro
maybe you would like to say some interestinf news before with the querstions from the community?
Charlie Lee: Let’s do it
Q1 from Telegram user @likechips I read that you created LTC while being employed at Google. Didn’t this create some conflict of interests? I heard that sometimes they try to steal tech developed by people who are employed by them at the time of it being created.
Charlie Lee: I’m not aware of Google trying to steal tech from people. But it is true that if you used your company’s resources to develop something, that thing belongs to the company. I didn’t work on Litecoin on Google campus. Only worked on it on nights and weekends at home. That said, Litecoin is open source software. Even if I did work on it at Google, there’s nothing for Google to steal. They can’t claim it because it’s already open source.
Serg | Satoshi Club: what was the main purpose behind it? Did you want to make a better Bitcoin or something different
Charlie Lee: Partially for fun and partially to make something that complements Bitcoin. Before Litecoin, there were about a dozen or so other alcoins. Each of them was launched with a premine. I decided that I can create something better than what’s out there but launch it fairly. So Litecoin doesn’t have a premine and I released the source code and binaries a week ahead of launch so people can test the software and mine on testnet before the launch. At launch, people can just change a configuration and immediately start mining Litecoin. I had no unfair advantage and had to compete with everyone else to mine my litecoins.
Serg | Satoshi Club: At the beginning, did you ever imagine that Litecoin and crypto in general will get at such capitalizations and growing adoption?
Charlie Lee: Lots of coins forked from Litecoin, but I don’t know of a single fork that copied the way I launched Litecoin. I believed Bitcoin would get such capitalization and adoption, but I did not expect much from Litecoin. Litecoin’s success was truly unimaginable. Just for reference, when I launched Litecoin, Bitcoin’s marketcap was around $100m. Today, Litecoin’s marketcap is about 100x that of Bitcoin’s marketcap back then.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: What hardware did you use in the beginning?
Charlie Lee: When Litecoin launched, it was CPU minable. So I just mined on my laptop.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Not a lot of people caught the days when it was still reasonable to mine from a laptop
Serg | Satoshi Club: When I first heard of that I didn’t take it seriously. So, I didn’t mine
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: No lost hard drives for you then
Serg | Satoshi Club: and no pizza with 10k BTC
Btw, I’ve read in some articles that you net worth is 21 billion $. If it’s true, you are among the richest people on Earth. Is it true?
It’s up to you if you want to answer that
Charlie Lee: I’d love to see that article. I will frame it. I’m doing well because I was early into Bitcoin. Since I launched Litecoin fairly, I didn’t have a lot, so selling LTC didn’t really move the needle for me. People don’t understand that. Creators of Ethereum, Ripple, and other premined coins, are billionaires because they printed coins out of thin air to give to themselves. I didn’t do that. So, unfortunately, no I don’t have a billion dollars. If I did, I wouldn’t be here doing an AMA.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Why not? AMA’s are fun
But I guess they are more fun when you do them from your yacht or something
Serg | Satoshi Club: https://www.wealthypersons.com/charlie-lee-net-worth-2020-2021/ this is the article
Charlie Lee: They also made me 3 inches taller. lol
Serg | Satoshi Club: they even claim to know your weight, height and so on
oh, so they don’t know
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: so it’s 18 billion?
Serg | Satoshi Club: and some billions richer
Charlie Lee: closer
Q2 from Telegram user @waterbanner When I write Charlie Lee in google, the first search recommendation is for: Charlie Lee sold Litecoin.
There were a lot of discussions regarding this topic. Can you clarify those speculations. Do you still have LTC or not?
Serg | Satoshi Club: btw, @iri_kravchuk , do you hodl LTC?
Charlie Lee: I still have some LTC that I have bought over the past couple years. I spend LTC and use it for example with the Litecoin Visa card. I’m not invested financially in LTC, but that doesn’t mean I’m not invested in Litecoin. I’ve been working on Litecoin with the Litecoin Foundation and I’m invested in the success of Litecoin, but I’m not financially tied to it. The reason I did that is because I don’t want to be motivated by money. I don’t want to make decisions that pump Litecoin price but is not good for Litecoin in the long term.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Yep
Serg | Satoshi Club: Is the card available in Europe?
Charlie Lee: Not yet. US only for now, but working on Europe. Maybe soon
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: I guess some people think that hodling is a form of showing trust. You think this is relevant?
Serg | Satoshi Club: I think that yes. I do trading but I have a portion of crypto which I am never touching
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Nice to see it :grin:. What about @coblee? So what are the untouchables for you @sspurss?
Charlie Lee: Most people are stuck in thinking it like CEOs having shares of their company. Litecoin is a decentralized currency and is totally different. CEOs are given shares for free. (I wasn’t) Their job is to increase shareholder value. (Mine isn’t) So you need to incentivize them to do the right thing by having them hold a lot of the shares, so the interest is aligned. My job is not to increase LTC value, but to increase LTC adoption. Yes, it’s correlated but it’s not exactly the same. Maybe you can be upset if Vitalik doesn’t hodl because he was given his ETH or Brad Garlinghouse for dumping his XRP for billions. But since I bought and mined all my LTC just like everyone else, I can do whatever I want with them. And the only reason why people know that I sold is because I was transparent about it. If I didn’t say anything, no one would know.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Yeah, that’s interesting actually. Why did you feel you needed to announce/ talk about it?
Charlie Lee: Lastly, I’m not paid anything by the Litecoin Foundation. I’m doing what I do because I want Litecoin to succeed. My legacy is tied to the success of Litecoin. That’s more incentives than any LTC can give me.
Serg | Satoshi Club: The top of the Maslow’s hierarchy. Yes, I remember your Tweet from 2017
Charlie Lee: I always think transparency is important and I have nothing to hide. But “sold at ATH” narrative is definitely very distracting today. And there was no way I knew it was going to be near the ATH back then. I don’t have inside information on the price movement of the whole industry. If people thought it was a bad thing, they could have sold their coins after I announced. The price of LTC actually went up for a few days after that. To me, it’s ridiculous that people are still blaming me. But it is what it is.
Q3 from Telegram user @mikolajcek Litecoin have almost 10 years. There are not so many projects with such longevity. What are your next objectives at Litecoin Foundation and what are your duties for the foundation
Charlie Lee: It’s pretty special that Litecoin has remained in the top10 marketcap for so many years. The best part is that the Litecoin network has worked nonstop and flawlessly for almost 10 years. I’m managing director of the Litecoin Foundation, so I effectively run the foundation. The foundation’s mission is to work on development and adoption of Litecoin. So that includes work on the Litecoin Core software, wallets like Litewallet, partnerships with the likes of Litecoin Card, and just everything that will help increase adoption of Litecoin worldwide.
Currently, one of the bigger projects is MWEB, which is adding Mimblewimble as extension blocks to Litecoin. We plan to push that out this year
Serg | Satoshi Club: can you tell us on what have you worked in the last 3 months for example? What was the main focus of the foundation. Or your department work on different aspects simultaneously? I’ve read some news about Flare as well. are you helping them or they build independently?
Charlie Lee: we work on many things at once with many different parners like Flare, Ternio, etc.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Is Litecoin Card an inhouse project? Or is it developed by another company? I think this could be a great adoption tool
Charlie Lee: It’s a partnership with Ternio. They developed the Blockcard and we are using that technology for the Litecoin Card
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Got it. How fast is the LTC community growing? Did it change in 2020? Or it’s a steady grow?
Charlie Lee: It’s very hard to measure community growth for a decentralized cryptocurrency.
Serg | Satoshi Club: yep, you can get some sort of idea based on how many wallets or active wallets are there, but some people use only exchanges. So, it’s hard to measure how many people own LTC just on exchanges
Charlie Lee: We saw a lot of growth in Litewallet downloads and daily users. I expect 2021 to be an even better year.Bull markets tend to be very good as expected
Q4 from Telegram user @hadrianus14 How big is the Litecoin foundation at the moment? How many people are involved directly in it? I mean on the about us section I saw a lot of names, but the has a few errors, copyright info is not updated, looks a bit forgoten to be honest
Charlie Lee: Litecoin Foundation has 4 board directors, who are all unpaid volunteers. We have a few paid positions: operations director, projects director, marketing director, website manager, and 2 developers. And many volunteers helping out with all sorts of things.
Serg | Satoshi Club: what is the early budget of the foundation? yearly
Charlie Lee: Budget is about $100k-$150k
Serg | Satoshi Club: is it from donations or you have some sort of income?
Charlie Lee: From donations, merchandise sale, and partnership rev share. For example, we’ve made money from selling the Litecoin Block.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: What is Litecoin Block?
Charlie Lee: ltcblock . com
With the recent rise in crypto prices, we now have a runway of 5+ years. We’re pretty lean. We’re not like other foundations that have millions of dollars from selling premines. So we do what we can to help Litecoin.
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Oh, that’s creative
Serg | Satoshi Club: thanks, Charlie. I really like your philosophy at the foundation
Charlie Lee: If Litecoin Foundation runs out of money and disappears, Litecoin will still go on without any issue. Some people may not realize this but the Litecoin Foundation only started in 2016.
Q5 from Telegram user @peerpeer With the evolving of all other chains, some of which have low to no fees at all, what makes LTC relevant? Why is it special?
Charlie Lee: Low fees is not that important. That’s what communities like Nano, for example, don’t understand. The most important thing for success at least initially is liquidity. Litecoin is one of the most liquid coins. It’s on practically every single exchange and it’s daily volume exceeds even its marketcap on most days. Without liquidity, the coin cannot succeed. The 2nd important thing is infrastructure adoption. I’m talking about wallets, ATMs, credit cards, merchant processors, and brokerage sites like Robinhood and PayPal. Compared to most coins, Litecoin is doing extremely well in here. LTC is the #2 most supported coin on ATMs behind Bitcoin. It’s one of only 4 coins supported on PayPal.
That said, Litecoin’s fees are still very low today. Litecoin is boring but it works. In the end, that’s what you want your money to be. Boring but works flawlessly.
Serg | Satoshi Club: and I think you have an answer for this in a recent tweet of yours
https://esatoshi.club/wp-content/uploads/p1-35.jpeg this is the tweet I mentioned
Charlie Lee: yeah, that’s a good tweet.
Q6 from Telegram user @fabricino The foundation is registered in Singapore, but the team seems from all around the word. Where are you located after all?
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: That should be an easy one
Serg | Satoshi Club: I think he meant about offices, headquarters
Charlie Lee: I’m in California. We have some people in LA, UK, Singapore. People are all over the world. we don’t have offices and headquarters. Don’t have the money!
Serg | Satoshi Club: I know some very cheap places for offices
Charlie Lee: when we are ready, we will have our headquarters on the moon
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: Which side of the moon?
Serg | Satoshi Club: bright side of course
Irina K. | @satoshi_club: You never know
Charlie Lee: Lite side of the moon
Part 2?—?live questions from the Telegram community
Q1 from Telegram user @Gutike95
the definition of Litecoin is simply “decentralized money”? but really the other cryptocurrency projects are not the same Decentralized money?
Charlie Lee: Most projects try to do too much. Litecoin just tries to do one thing, which is to be good sound money.
Q2 from Telegram user @cengizhantekin
XRP had a great Spark airdrop recently but after that has been dealing with SEC case and delistings. Now I heard that Litecoin will also do a Spark airdrop. Can you please share the details of the airdrop? And should we expect a SEC case afterwards
Charlie Lee: I don’t have details on the airdrop right now. Stay tuned. Flare will announce it. I don’t expect an SEC case.
Q3 from Telegram user @Jonahapagu
There are reports that no one is working on the development of Litecoin protocol.. does this bother you at the moment, and what can you say is the reason for the lack of interest of developers in working on Litecoin protocol.. don’t you think this spells doom for the future of litecoin
Charlie Lee: We are constantly working on protocol development. But you have to understand that Litecoin gets most of the work from Bitcoin. So there’s not a lot of work to keep Litecoin up to date. Never was a lot of work. Litecoin works as is today. So if we stop all future development work, Litecoin will still continue to work. So development is not a requirement for success like it is for most other projects.
That said, we are doing a lot of work on MWEB. Stay tuned for that.
Q4 from Telegram user @Nickkiii
Are one-sided mimblewimble transactions finally supported on the Litecoin Network?
Charlie Lee: We’re working on that. We plan to have one-side transactions at launch of MWEB
Q5 from Telegram user @KeymerS
The only benefits that LTC provides to its users is the guarantee that its value will increase considerably over time? Or do you plan to benefit them with some liquidity mining system, farms?
Charlie Lee: That’s a wrong way to look at it. The value LTC provide is censorship-resistant money.
Q6 from Telegram user @Spott
” Core v0.18.1.” of LITECOIN was released last year,
How can users upgrade and what are the added features and will you release another upgraded version ?
Charlie Lee: Working on v0.20 now.
Q7 from Telegram user @Isabelherrera_fontes
About scalability, have any project to make the transactions of ltc more fast? I wait five ten minutes to send small amount!
Charlie Lee: The Lightning Network also works on Litecoin. I think LN will continue to improve this year and will become very popular on Bitcoin and Litecoin.
Q8 from Telegram user @Jonahapagu
There has been a lot of controversies regarding litecoin’s instamine phase, that the initial distribution of Litecoin was done in an unfair and uneven manner, and two years back you were criticised for posting and deleting a tweet that was aimed at Dash where you claimed that Dash was launched to friends only for the first few days and then total supply reduced after that which to many isa similar issue to what you were being criticised for…so what is your stand regarding the controversies associated with litecoin’s Instamine phase, what issues did you have with DASH and why was that tweet deleted…
Charlie Lee: Litecoin had an issue initially where it was mining coins very fast for the first few days. But because it was fairly launched, everyone had the same opportunity for those coins. Like I said previously coins forked from Litecoin but didn’t copy the way it was launched fairly. Dash didn’t launch with Windows binaries and launched secretly to insiders. Those insiders were able to mine a lot of coins very fast, much faster than with Litecoin’s launch. And later on they voted to reduce the total supply, which made the initial distribution problem worse. So I criticized them for this and later on deleted the tweet because I didn’t want to create more drama.
Q9 from Telegram user @K2ice
Why do you feel low fees is not that important?
Charlie Lee: Decentralization comes at a cost. There are trade offs. Ideally you want a coin that is secure, low cost, and censorship resistant. I think you may only get 2 out of these 3. So low cost might have to go eventually. But you can build layers on top of the coin to achieve low cost and that’s what Lightning Network is.
Q10 from Telegram user @GoldRocket27
Tell me please, is Litecoincard working or still in development? I can’t figure out, the registration form works, and the Android & IOS app doesn’t downloads. What prevents the release of this card?
Charlie Lee: The card is works. You can register and order a card from the website. We are working on integration with Litewallet. That should launch soon.
Q11 from Telegram user @konditer_rolex
In 2018, you bought a Nano and told everyone about it. Since then, I have been a Nano holder and have never used Litecoin. Tell me which coin is better than Litecoin now?
Charlie Lee: Nano still can’t compete with Litecoin in terms of liquidity, decentralization, and adoption. Only coin better than Litecoin is Bitcoin.
Q12 from Telegram user @Boylut
Can you tell us the relationship between you and Bobby lee of Ballet?
Charlie Lee: Bobby is my brother
Q13 from Telegram user @Mamitabella
Hi what do you think of Hex @coblee is at Litecoin level?
Charlie Lee: Not even in the same ballpark
Q14 from Telegram user @alptrader
Is it possible for a coin to be forked from litecoin and reach a higher market cap than litecoin?
Charlie Lee: yes. at one point Dash had a higher marketcap
Q15 from Telegram user @Cakelov
As I remember, the selling point from Litecoin is “Asic Resistance”. ASIC-resistant is the property of a cryptocurrency that is “immune” to Asicmining. But it looks like Litecoin already abandoned that goal. Can you tell us the reason?
Charlie Lee: To me asic resistance means that it resists asics from happening, but it’s not asic-proof. It was very important for Litecoin to be CPU-minable in the beginning, so asic-resistance was important and it did its job.
Q16 from Telegram user @stargateeatlantis
Do you allow anyone to copy your code and start publishing their own coin?
Charlie Lee: yes, it’s open source. Thousands have
Part 3?—?Quiz Results
Charlie Lee prepared 4 questions for this part. The total reward pool for quiz was 300$.
For more information and future AMAs, join our Social Media channels:
English Telegram group: https://t.me/Satoshi_club Russian Telegram group: https://t.me/satoshi_club_ru Spanish Telegram group: https://t.me/satoshi_club_spanish Telegram Channel: https://t.me/satoshi_club_channel Twitter: https://twitter.com/realsatoshiclub Website: https://esatoshi.club/ Our partners:
Litecoin Community: https://t.me/Litecoin
