Many digital currency enthusiasts see bitcoin and Ethereum as central points. Amateur investors might also be familiarized with other cryptocurrencies such as ripple or EOS. They may also be familiarized with gimmick tokens such as dogecoin. However, Litecoin is one of the most overlooked digital currencies.
Litecoin is currently ranked No. 12th place on the list, according to market capitalization, is occupied by Litecoin. We’ll be looking at Lee and his experiences in shaping Litecoin.
Starting A Career and Early Life
Charlie Lee was born on Ivory Coast in West Africa, with his parents have been there for many decades. Lee, then 13, moved to the United States with his family. He graduated high school in 1995 and attended MIT. Lee graduated in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree in computer science.
Lee was passionate about computer technology from the beginning of his professional career. Lee worked for many top tech companies in the 2000s, including Guidewire Software and Google. He was a Google software engineer and developed the idea for Litecoin.
According to a biography on Medium, Lee’s work at Google involved projects like YouTube Mobile and Chrome OS. In 2011, while working at Google, Lee learned about bitcoin while reading an article on Silk Road. Lee found this a turning point in his life.
Before this, he was looking for ways to trade gold. His background and economic beliefs led him to approach the Federal Reserve System with skepticism. Lee was looking for an alternative way to invest that wasn’t dependent on standard financial resources and became very interested in bitcoin and the blockchain technology that supports it.
From Developer to Miner
Along with many other early adopters of bitcoin who were also talented computer scientists, Lee began to experiment with mining. He also met Mike Hearn who was a bitcoin developer. This conversation and his interest in bitcoin prompted Lee to develop his digital currency. Lee wasn’t the only one to attempt this; many developers hoped to create the next bitcoin in the early days of bitcoin.
Fairbix was Lee’s first cryptocurrency project. This coin was developed by Lee in September 2011. It was modeled after Tenebrix and bitcoin, which were both released earlier in 2011. Lee and his team used large parts of the Tenebrix source codes.
Fairbrix did not succeed due to a premining problem and software bugs that made the coin vulnerable to a 51% attack. However, it was not a complete failure. Lee would use the proof-of-work protocol from Fairbix to his later work on litecoin.
Litecoin
Lee released Litecoin just weeks after Fairbrix was unsuccessfully released. Litecoin was based on the core bitcoin code with some adjustments Lee believed would enhance bitcoin. These included the hashing protocol itself, the transaction time for blocks, and the total maximum supply cap value, among others.
Lee has tried to present Litecoin as an alternative to bitcoin and not as a competitor to bitcoin. Lee believes that Litecoin can be used for small transactions such as online shopping, but bitcoin may be more suitable for larger international transactions.
Since the release of Litecoin, Lee has worked at Coinbase, the popular digital currency exchange. Lee quit Coinbase in June 2017 to devote more time to Litecoin. Although Litecoin has enjoyed great success, rumors started to circulate in spring 2018 that Lee planned on leaving his cryptocurrency.
Lee stated that he plans to eventually leave the currency as he believes his leadership of the network will stop Litecoin from becoming fully decentralized. Lee has not yet provided any information regarding his plans for Litecoin and other digital currency projects. He has also not indicated when Litecoin customers can expect him to get rid of the digital currency that he has created.