14 With Litecoin's Charlie Lee

Bitcoin Bottom Line

Legend Charlie Lee, founder of Litecoin, joins hosts Steven McClurg and C.J. Wilson on the podcast this week to talk about Bitcoin and Litecoin. Lee shares his story about starting out in the crypto space by buying bitcoin at an ATH of $30 before it dipped to $2. Even after this dip, he bought more, explaining that the community didn’t lose faith. He tells the hosts that back in the day, he used to buy bitcoin by meeting up with a stranger at a Starbucks or McDonalds with cash. However, he would wait there for the transaction to confirm which was around 10 minutes, but sometimes it would take up to an hour. He also shares that he’s done cash-bitcoin transactions in bank lobbies and at the steps of police stations, where it felt like a drug transaction. “For certain people who aren’t very technical, being on an exchange is safer,” Lee advises, “For people who are more technical, I would recommend they handle it themselves. For those who can’t do it themselves, I recommend an ETF rather than buying coins and leaving it on an exchange.” Back in the day, Coinbase was making it easy for people to get into Bitcoin, which is why Lee joined them as an engineer and was one of the first five team members. Now, the exchange has grown to around 5,000 team members. In his time at Litecoin, Lee observed that, “90% of new users get in at the All-Time-Highs, and that’s always been the case.” The hosts ask Charlie Lee about Litecoin, which he founded. McClurg compares Bitcoin to gold, and Litecoin to silver. Lee talks about how Bitcoin is almost perfect, except for the fungibility, so that is one thing he is focused on in terms of Litecoin’s evolution. Lee shares how he always thought the 10 minute restriction to mine one block on the bitcoin blockchain was too conservative, and he wanted to create something faster. Litecoin is fast and cheap. Wilson states, “Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general has been best oriented towards private transactions, even though they’re peer to peer. Balancing that one-on-one, as opposed to the anonymity or pseudonymity is one of the coolest things that’s happened.” He goes on to share how transacting in bitcoin at his car dealership works, and how it’s the next development in the space. McClurg expresses how when people look at an 8% drop of Bitcoin and mention the volatility, he points out how fast the prices of cars, groceries, etc. are going up right now due to inflation or supply chain issues. “If that’s not volatility, I don’t know what is,” he says. “Right now Bitcoin is volatile, but in the long term, it will be less and less volatile,” Lee states, “Before we know it, the dollar will become a lot more volatile than Bitcoin.” The three close out the episode with continued conversations about the future of Litecoin, l “I put in extra effort to make it fair, where everyone had an equal chance to mine blocks. I, just like everyone else, had to mine the blocks.” Lee shares that pretty much all the code for Litecoin is forked from Bitcoin. The only thing Bitcoin didn’t have was the code to create the Genesis Block, which Lee had to create himself for Litecoin. Just like what Satoshi did put a quote from a recent newspaper from the time of genesis, Lee did something similar in the Litecoin Genesis Block. Listen to the episode to find out more!

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