Litecoin in crisis?
As reported previously by CNBC and Yahoo finance, the founder and head of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, has sold his entire holdings of Litecoin Wednesday.
Mr. Lee had announced on the popular platform Reddit, that he has “sold or donated” his holdings in Litecoin over the past few days. The crypto-celebrity has also announced that he does not intend to step down and he will continue working on the project.
The official reason cited for Mr. Lee selling his share was a ‘conflict of interest’ as he is was a former director of engineering at Coinbase.
“Whenever I tweet about Litecoin price or even just good or bad 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… 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.”
The announcement came shortly after Coinbase added bitcoin cash to its platform and was swiftly accused of insider trading due to the price of bitcoin cash soared a few hours before Coinbase’s announcement. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced in a blog post that Coinbase will investigate whether any of its employees engaged in insider trading with their knowledge that the site would be adding bitcoin cash
It is currently unknown how much Litecoin was sold, but for now it seems to have had little to no effect on the current value of Litecoin, which is currently being traded at $313. Traders have taken the announcement with mixed sentiment. Some have claimed that despite the announcement Litecoin will keep on rising and is speculated to reach $1700 by 2018. Others claim that the fact that Mr. Lee has sold his entire holdings indicates that the head of Litecoin has no faith in his own project and no longer has an economic incentive to improve or innovate.
It is hard to say whether the announcement will have long-term repercussions on the value of Litecoin. So far it seems that the sentiment of crypto-traders is varied and no consensus is reached. We must wait and see the result.
