Litecoin creator Charlie Lee continues to guide us through the memories. In the first part he took us through Litecoin trade fair starts. Given the small number of projects that managed to do this, it was quite an accomplishment. Today, in the second part, we will cover the project’s relationship with cryptocurrency exchanges. Charlie Lee wears his heart on his sleeve and tells a heartfelt story that ends in betrayal. Do you feel the excitement in the air?
Related reading | Charlie Lee predicts a resurgence of Litecoin as Bitcoin Cash has stalled
This part of the story is all about relationships, connections, and the long road to credibility. It’s also about Charlie Lee’s resistance and willpower.
Before we dive into the meat and potatoes of the story, however, a slight detail that shouldn’t go unnoticed.
Charlie Lee gives flowers to the Litecoin logo creators
The logos don’t have much history, but it’s cool that Lee pays tribute where credit is due. The first and the second show the development:
The second logo was designed by @mjbmetals. I still like that very much. It looks great next to this Bitcoin logo.https: //t.co/T5hzEldonI pic.twitter.com/Uy5qpl8JUP
– Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021
And the last is a simplification of the second:
And the current logo is designed by Robbie Coleman (@robertfcoleman) and his team.
Decentralized of course, there are many other logos that people have created and used. Some are pretty crazy. And people can use any logo they want and there is nothing I can do about it. pic.twitter.com/M7FgBcGPum
– Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021
That being said, let’s get back to the story.
LTC price chart for 10/9/2021 on Coinbase | Source: LTC / USD on TradingView.com
Litecoin’s long hard road to sharing listings
This contradicts the title, but in 2011 Litecoin was immediately listed in the now defunct BTC-e. The site was a pretty successful cryptocurrency exchange that fell out of favor when the US Department of Justice accused it of laundering funds from the Mt. Gox hack, but that’s another story. Regarding Litecoin, Charlie Lee tells us that the listing “helped a lot as the miners had access to liquidity fairly quickly. Litecoin is quickly becoming one of the most popular coins on BTC-e.”
From 2011 to 2013, I spent a lot of time supporting the early growth of Litecoin and pushing for adoption wherever I can. I’ve spoken to pretty much all of the exchanges in support of LTC. I realized that liquidity is super important for a coin. Nothing works without liquidity.
– Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021
But although Lee “talked to pretty much all exchanges to support LTC,“Two years later, the second listed Litecoin. Bitfinex dared the emerging project. “That was big business for Litecoin. It is the first major exchange, the LTC. supports. “
At the Bitcoin 2013 conference, I remember a talk by Bitstamp Co-Founder and CEO Nejc Kodrič (@nejc_kodric). During the Q&A after the talk, I asked him if Bitstamp would add Litecoin. I think he just giggled and moved on to the next question.
– Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021
Then Charlie Lee remembers trying to get Bitstamp’s CEO to list them and he ignored him. Just to list the 2017 coin. The same thing happened with BitPay. This company only supported Litecoin this year.
However, the Chinese exchanges listed Litecoin from the start. “Sometime in late 2012 through early 2013, two of the largest exchanges in China, Okcoin and Huobi, added support for LTC. That was huge.“The question arises, did Charlie Lee have to shadow these two exchanges so hard? “The trading volume was pretty insane too, but unclear how much of it was invented.”
In 2013, I thought it was time for me to leave Litecoin. I was very fortunate to find Warren Togami (@wtogami), founder of the Fedora project, as the lead developer of Litecoin. Warren is amazing and we were very lucky to have him at the forefront of development.
– Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021
Charlie Lee and Coinbase, a love story
In 2013, Charlie Lee stepped down as the lead developer of Litecoin and left the job to Warren Togami. At the same time, he is giving up a high-paying job at Google because they are not interested in cryptocurrencies. Then Coinbase comes into play. Lee contacts them to see if they’re interested in listing Litecoin and they hire him instead.
I interviewed at Coinbase and on paper it sounded like a terrible deal. I had to commute to SF, which was an hour each way, accept a pay cut of around 50%, work twice as hard, and miss out on all of the Google perks. But for me it was a breeze.
– Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021
To to Charlie Lee, “Coinbase was the hot startup and THE crypto company that made Bitcoin easy to use. I knew that if Bitcoin wasn’t successful, Litecoin wasn’t going anywhere either.“A cold hard truth that all Altcoins have to live with to this day. In addition, Lee finally wanted to convince Coinbase to support Litecoin. How could he not?
But at least he created a cool banner for it. 😁https: //t.co/7BToh7YNdX
After that there were rumors that @MtGox was finally adding its second coin, Litecoin. At the time, MtGox had 97% of the total Bitcoin trading volume. LTC’s support would be enormous for Litecoin’s liquidity. pic.twitter.com/rfBhA7z1Pm
– Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021
The Chinese connection paid off and BTC China, led by Charlie Lee’s brother, listed the coin. “Although it was big news, why did it take so long ?!“Lee asks hilariously. Also note that the banner he mentions alludes to Charlie and Bobby being brothers.
In 2015 there were rumors that the infamous Mt. Gox exchange was listing Litecoin. At the time, this was THE place to be. Finally Charlie Lee confirms the story, “The rumors were actually true. In mid-2015, I spoke to CEO Mark Karpelès almost every day.“The Mt. Gox hack, however, was exposed before these plans were realized. And all hell broke loose. “In retrospect, it was a blessing in bad luck. “
Then, as luck would have it, things turned sour in the romance between Charlie Lee and Coinbase.
That changed in 2016, however. That was when Litecoin trading volumes exploded on Chinese exchanges and I knew that Coinbase was leaving a lot of money on the table by not supporting Altcoins. And it made business sense for Coinbase to add altcoins.
– Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021
Brian Armstrong’s tweet, which he refers to, says, “Ripple, Stellar and Altcoins are all a distraction. Bitcoin is way too far ahead. We should focus on Bitcoin and sidechains. ”Impressive. What would today’s Brian Armstrong say about this statement?
However, in 2016, Litecoin trading volumes exploded on the Chinese exchanges and Charlie Lee saw his opportunity. “This was also when Ethereum started to get big. So I made a proposal to Brian and Fred Ehrsam to add both LTC and ETH to Coinbase.“The thesis of the proposal was that since the people of the US did not have an easy way to buy, store and trade these coins, it”a lot of unsatisfied demand.“And Coinbase could make a lot of money.
The demand was great. The people of the United States did not have an easy way to store and trade these coins. And Coinbase would steal a lion’s share of the demand if we added the 2 coins at the beginning.
Both Brian and Fred like the idea, but they crossed out LTC. They just want to do ETH.
– Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 8, 2021
Here it is: treason. The two Coinbase managers broke Charlie Lee’s heart by accepting the proposal, but only for Ethereum. “Even though I followed the plan, it somehow rubbed me in the wrong direction. Litecoin had a much higher global trading volume at the time and was number 2 in market capitalization. “A little later, Lee took three months to Coinbase to concentrate on his project.
Related reading | CHARLIE LEE: AN UNUSUAL INTERVIEW
In the next episode, the story of Litecoin is intertwined with that of Bitcoin and the controversial Segwit implementation. We will find that Charlie Lee and his team were instrumental in this. As? Tune in to find out.
Featured image from Executium on Unsplash charts from TradingView
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