Charlie Lee, who founded litecoin in 2011, sold and donated all of his litecoin tokens back in December 2017 when litecoin was hovering around its all time high, way above $200 per coin.
Lee said back then he is sometimes accused of talking about the price of the digital currency on Twitter for “personal benefit.”
“Some people even think I short LTC (litecoin)!” he said. “So in a sense, it is conflict of interest for me to hold LTC and tweet about it because I have so much influence.”
He added: “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 cryptocurrency in general.”
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Coincidental with Charlie’s selling was a dawn of a bear market and litecoin price plunged, along with the rest of the market, ten-fold from its all time high. This was reason enough for the disgruntled LTC holders clique to grumble at him every time litecoin price dips some more.
Charlie explained his reasoning for the sale too many times and did it again on Reddit, couple of days ago, spurred by a post made by one of the members of LTC subreddit.
Lee said he might have been better off if he kept the sale for himself without telling anyone:
Maybe. I underestimated the general investors knowledge and appreciation of decentralized cryptocurrencies. They keep comparing Litecoin to traditional public companies. I’m not the CEO and my job is not to increase shareholder value. I also wasn’t given coins.
After being accused that he just sold at the peak to make shitload of money, Charlie refuted:
If that’s the case, I would have sold the coins quietly and not told anyone about it. It would be quite easy to sell for BTC on minimal kyc exchanges and then sell BTC on GDAX. I didn’t have that much LTC to begin with. No one would be the wiser.
It’s hard for people not in my shoes to understand the conflict of interest. In time, people will understand.
As one of the redditors suggested he buys the coins back, Charlie explained why that is a bad idea:
I won’t be rebuying as that would defeat the purpose of selling in the first place. I will work on Litecoin, develop it, promote it, and use it, but I won’t be invested in the coin financially. When Litecoin succeeds, I will be rewarded because I’m the creator of a coin everyone uses. That kind of success money can’t buy.
