For investors who are into crypto-asset investing, big names like Bitcoin and Ethereum may be the center of your attention. But it should be noted, that apart from the two big names, there are crypto assets that are also growing no less, such as EOS and Ripple. Apart from that, there’s still Litecoin. The cryptocurrency, which ranks in the top 10 as the world’s largest digital asset by market cap, now has a token circulation of $9 billion.
For some dedicated fans, Litecoin is one of the assets that is considered promising. Even the name of the creator, Charlie Lee is also equated with Vitalik Buterin (founder of Ethereum) and Satoshi Nakamoto (founder of Bitcoin). Who is Lee and how did he go until he succeeded in creating Litecoin?
Career Start
Born in Ivory Coast, Lee and his family moved to the United States at the age of 13. He then studied there and earned a degree in computer science at one of the world’s prestigious universities, MIT.
Since the beginning of his career, Lee has shown a great interest in computers. Since 2000, he has worked for various major world companies including Google and Guidewire Software. It was his working days at Google that later inspired him to create Litecoin.
From a Miner to a Developer
Along with the early adopters of Bitcoin, Lee, who is talented in computer science, also began exploring activities as a miner. He then met with Mike Hearn, a developer working on Blockchain software development for Bitcoin. From there, Lee then began to develop the idea of creating his own digital currency that copied the Bitcoin model. Lee is the only computer science engineer to try this at a time when many developers dream of making ‘the next Bitcoin’.
Lee’s first crypto project was Fairbrix which was launched in September 2011. With his team, Lee created this crypto asset using source code from Tenebrix. Unfortunately, this plan did not go smoothly because there were various problems that made Fairbix vulnerable to being hacked. However, what Lee did for Fairbix did not end in vain. He then adopted the example system from Fairbrix to create Litecoin.
Litecoin development
Just a few weeks after Fairbrix’s failed release, Lee released Litecoin. Litecoin is modeled using Bitcoin’s core code, with a few tweaks that Lee says will make it better than Bitcoin. This includes the hashing protocol itself, the transaction time for the block and the total maximum supply limit value.
Although Litecoin was created with Bitcoin as the model, Lee has worked hard to present other cryptocurrencies as alternatives to Bitcoin, not as competitors. Lee believes that Litecoin is more useful for smaller transactions such as online shopping, while Bitcoin can be more useful for large international transactions.
Since the release of Litecoin, Lee has worked at Coinbase, a popular digital currency exchange. In June 2017, Lee left Coinbase to spend more time developing Litecoin.
While litecoin has been a huge success, in the spring of 2018 rumors started circulating that Lee was planning to leave the cryptocurrency world. Lee stated that he would eventually leave the currency because he believed that his involvement as a network leader would prevent his product from becoming fully decentralized.
