
Litecoin price, tweets, and conflict of interest - dsr12
https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/7kzw6q/litecoin_price_tweets_and_conflict_of_interest/
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thisisit
_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._

And that is why CEOs or lead developers of public companies don't tweet their
plans. Generally, there are a quarterly meetings or investor relations day
when stuff is announced. To top it every buy/sell by a designated insider
(read highl level executives) are reported to the SEC for transparency sake.
Announcing that he has sold everything without disclosing where and how is
rather disingenuous, if there is a need to instill some transparency.

Still I do agree with him on this: _As you can see, some people even think I’m
pumping Bcash for my personal benefit. It seems like I just can’t win._

Cryptocurrency FUD crowd will always find a reason.

~~~
raverbashing
Yes and the "FUD" goes both ways, on the "this is completely worthless" and
also on the mania side, of "mortgaging the house to buy bitcoin" not to
mention the infighting between BCH and BTC and other coins

~~~
oelmekki
In the other way, it's called FOMO :) (fear of missing out)

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steve_taylor
A CEO of a publicly listed company doesn't liquidate all their shares because
there might be a perceived conflict of interest. That would signal disbelief
at the top and send the share price tumbling. Similarly, I struggle to see how
the founder of Litecoin believes that Litecoin could be the future of money
when he liquidates all his LTC. And I don't see any upside to LTC's market
share after he publicly declares that he is no longer invested in Litecoin.

~~~
buttershakes
I couldn't agree more with this sentiment. Charlie has been the driving
developer and force behind litecoin since its inception, and while he may
continue to fill that role, nothing signals actual stake in the success of a
project like ownership. If Satoshi dumped his coins and then said he wanted
the project to succeed the price of Bitcoin would be negligible, a very clear
market signal that he didn't believe in it's future prospects. It's like
saying, I got mine, thanks guys.

Also, with respect to this being like a CEO taking a $1 salary. Most CEOs have
massive stock and performance incentives linked with their company's success.
Charlie has none.

~~~
scoggs
I know this is a stretch and quite a loop of a situation to jump through to
make my thoughts true but could we liken his sale of his LTCs in a similar
vein to a Facebook's Lead Developer deciding to deactivate their account
because they spend too much time on FB being distracted when they should be
working?

I know the financial ties and importance of that developer's personal use of
their product is _very_ different from LTC and it's Charlie's situation, but
will 100% of people really not believe he wanted to focus where he wanted and
also remove certain aspects of criticism? Is it possible that he both knew
that criticism would come either way and less criticism would come from the
choice to sell his LTCs away considering he knows, himself, that he will have
more time and energy to improve LTC since he knows he's being honest (I assume
of course)?

~~~
buttershakes
I totally believe that it is possible he wanted to do that. Why not sell all
of his LTC at $10? Why continue to focus his time and energy on it? There is
only one reason, which is that it hadn't made him enough money yet. Now that
it has, the idea that he will focus substantially all of his time on it to
make it even better rings pretty hollow. Maybe he will do that instead of
spending his tens of millions (or more) on other pursuits. Altruism is a
pretty rare quality, financial motivation has an uncanny way of actually
getting things done.

~~~
hndamien
Of course he wanted to. The whole idea of Bitcoin was the free us from central
banking. When Bitcoin was $30, this had hardly been achieved - it still is not
accomplished today - but we are getting there. This was the point that Charlie
Lee bought Bitcoin, and I presume it is the point when he decided to clone it.
Philosophically this is a ridiculous thing to do if you believe in Bitcoin and
what it was trying to achieve. This is the reason that I never have and never
would buy Litecoin. Charlie's selling out only confirms what I already
suspected. I hope the bag holders enjoy the whatever the ideology seems to be
over there.

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gtrubetskoy
I am a little surprised by how most of the comments I see here attempt to
compare LTC with a stock of a company where Charlie is a "CEO". It has nothing
to do with that.

Litecoin (and Bitcoin) are open source projects. They are driven by developers
who are interested in solving an interesting problem in an innovative way.
They do not do it for the value of the coin, and getting rich was never the
intent, though it may have been an unintended consequence for the early
adopters.

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billmalarky
A recent tweet of his suggested he believed it was overvalued.

[https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/940353265585160192](https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/940353265585160192)

Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum has voiced similar concerns

[https://mobile.twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/94085013791...](https://mobile.twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/940850137919836160)

It's probably worth mentioning, he has done this right before Coinbase
starting supporting Bitcoin Cash, which seems to be quite a competitor to
Litecoin, as it mainly differs from Bitcoin by its higher blockchain
transaction rate.

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moneytide1
Great! Another citizen making money on money. We are all inspired. Maybe we
too someday can make money on money and become the financial middlemen these
Coins are replacing.

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Nursie
Well, he's probably wealthy beyond what he thought possible. Good time to get
out of the game.

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jatsign
Calling Lee a shill for Litecoin is like calling Jobs a shill for Apple.

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lawn
Why would I use something the main developer himself doesn't use?

~~~
s_dev
Because it remains useful regardless of whether the developer uses it himself.

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omegbule
So many cynical comments in here. I don't blame him for wanting the
cryptocurrency to stand on its own and not be tied to any tinfoil hattery.

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gitgud
This reminds me of the time the [1] Head of the Linux Foundation used an iPad
to give a talk about the future of Linux on the desktop...

[1] [https://itsfoss.com/linux-foundation-head-uses-
macos/](https://itsfoss.com/linux-foundation-head-uses-macos/)

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55555
Vitalik sold most of his ETH at $4. Now Charlie has sold all of his LTC.

Maybe these statements are facts. Or maybe these guys just dont plan on paying
their taxes.

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koonsolo
Here is my advice: Don't try to please every random person on the internet,
because you never will.

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hackinthebochs
The original bitcoin copy/paster made a killing and is now out of the game.
Makes perfect sense to me. He's not a true believer or a technical visionary
like satoshi or Vitalik. I never understood the following he gets.

~~~
StavrosK
> He's not a true believer

I know this isn't a constructive comment, but this cult terminology bothers
me.

~~~
hackinthebochs
It should coming from regular people. But the creator should be a "true
believer" in his own product. I think that should be completely expected.

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paul7986
He was the Director of Technology at Coinbase who adopted it not soon after he
left.

~~~
richardknop
He didn't adopt Litecoin after he left Coinbase. Charlie Lee created LTC even
before he joined Coinbase.

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bhouston
I guess this guy believes it is a bubble and this is his cover for getting out
while the price is high.

Wants to crystalize his gains. Gonna be a big tax bill.

How much did he make?

> It is the world’s fifth larger cryptocurrency, according to
> Coinmarketcap.com, with a total ‘market cap’ of more than $18 billion. It’s
> value, at the time of writing, is $330.14 per coin, up more than 75X from
> just $4.36 on January 1, 2017.

~~~
j_s
> sold _and donated_ [emphasis added]

Wild guess: nothing.

~~~
Nursie
Wild guess - he sold some litecoins and donated others.

I agree you could read that as sold all of them and donated the proceeds.
Needs clarification.

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Phemist
Should this be changed to the non-AMP link?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/7kzw6q/litecoin_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/7kzw6q/litecoin_price_tweets_and_conflict_of_interest/)

