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Litecoin Founder Charlie Lee Sells All Of His LTC

Litecoin Founder Charlie Lee Sells All Of His LTC

The cryptocurrency kingpin cites a conflict of interests as his reason, but stresses that he is not quitting Litecoin

Paddy Maddison

Paddy Maddison

Key cryptocurrency player Charlie Lee has revealed that he has sold almost all of his holdings in Litecoin (LTC), the cryptocurrency he founded back in 2011.

Lee, who is also the former director of engineering at Coinbase, made the revelation in a post on Reddit. He cited his desire to avoid the conflict of interest attached to his position of power and his role as LTC's founder as the reason.

Credit: BTC Keychain (Creative Commons)

Aside from a few physical coins kept as collectables, Lee has either sold or donated every single LTC he previously owned.

He also claimed that he receives negative attention whenever he tweets about Litecoin, with people accusing him of doing it for personal benefit. Without any LTC to benefit from financially, Lee hopes he will avoid this this sort of attitude.

"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," the Litecoin founder wrote in the post on Reddit.

"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.

Credit: BTC Keychain (Creative Commons)

"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."

He added: "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."

Lee also took the opportunity to quash any potential rumours about him quitting his work with the cryptocurrency, saying this was 'the best way for [him] to continue to oversee Litecoin's growth'.

"Don't worry. I'm not quitting Litecoin," he said. "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."

Featured Image Credit: BTC Keychain/Creative Commons

Topics: World News, Money, US News, Cryptocurrency