He won't say how many coins he had, but all of Litecoin founder Charlie Lee's share in the cryptocurrency has been sold or donated.
In a Reddit post early Wednesday, Lee explained how his stake in Litecoin is a conflict of interest: "Whenever I tweet about Litecoin price or even just good or bads [sic] news, I get accused of doing it for personal benefit," he wrote.
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Even though Lee sold all his coin, he's still very much involved in his currency. "I’m not quitting Litecoin," he assured in his note.
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Lee's announcement comes just after the exchange Coinbase announced support for Bitcoin Cash, a Bitcoin off-shoot. With that announcement came worries about insider trading within Coinbase. Lee had a busy morning on Twitter correcting misconceptions that he dumped Litecoin and other currencies due to insider trading.
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Lee was particularly incensed by a MarketWatch article that he thought inaccurately made it seem like his Litecoin sale was because of insider trading.
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We reached out to Lee and Litecoin, but haven't heard back yet.
Litecoin dropped nearly $50, or 13.8 percent, since Tuesday. As of Wednesday afternoon it was at $311.26.
Here's Lee's whole statement:
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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