Did Charlie Lee Sell His Litecoin Because of Potential Facebook Partnership

Yesterday morning the news broke; Litecoin developer and outspoken founder, Charlie Lee, sold or donated all of his liquid Litecoin holdings.  This prompted a big sell-off in the cryptocurrency markets. And crashing the market from more than 600 bin to as low as 480bin according to The Coinmarketcap.

More and more Cryptocurrencies are coming to Coinbase adding Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to its stable of coins available for purchase. This also sent shockwaves through the markets.

In his post on Reddit, Lee explained that he felt his ownership stake was actually a burden on Litecoin’s development as a real-world medium of exchange:

Litecoin price, tweets, and conflict of interest from litecoin

But, as a commenter on the Zerohedge article on this event pointed out, quite astutely:

It was requested from Facebook to do it; so that he can’t be accused of personal interest, decision bias with regards to the LTC ecosystem development. Facebook is preparing the big announcement that they will introduce support for Litecoin as payment channel.

 

“Digital currency exchange startup Coinbase has announced the appointment of a Facebook executive to its board of directors. In joining the board, David Marcus, vice president of messaging products at Facebook, will bring years of experience in building large-scale mobile products, according to a Coinbase statement posted yesterday.”

He quoted the article from Coindesk. 

And Litecoin, among the major cryptocurrencies, has a unique position to be that currency for Facebook’s digital payment platform; as it fills out its road-map into 2018.

Market manipulation and fraud are going to be a big deal in this space going forward.  The temptation to cash in and scam people is simply too high not to try and game the system to individuals’ advantage.

Charlie Lee selling his coins and publicly calling out Satoshi Nakamoto to do the same and end the potential for a whale dumping his stash and bombing the market is another sign that the Litecoin Foundation is looking to go mainstream and take cryptocurrencies out of the ‘hookers, drugs and guns’ market and into the ‘Coke and Starbucks” one.