Litecoin founder Charlie Lee says he’s sold all his holdings in the cryptocurrency: In the latest development, a report has it that Charlie Lee the creator of litecoin has sold off all of his holdings in the cryptocurrency he created.
Lee, who founded litecoin in 2011, said on Reddit Wednesday that he had “sold and donated” all of his litecoin tokens over the past few days — except for some physical ones he keeps as “collectibles.”
According to him, he is sometimes accused of talking about the price of the digital currency on Twitter for “personal benefit.”
He said: “Some people even think I short LTC (litecoin)!”.
“So in a sense, it is conflict of interest for me to hold LTC and tweet about it because I have so much influence.”
He added: “I have always refrained from buying/selling LTC before or after my major tweets, but this is something only I know.
And there will always be a doubt on whether any of my actions were to further my own personal wealth above the success of litecoin and cryptocurrency in general.”
Last week, Lee told CNBC he doesn’t like to speculate on price moves because he is “always wrong.” “If I tell you it’s going to go up and it doesn’t, you’ll be upset,” he said in an interview.
Litecoin’s price has seen some significant upward momentum this month. The cryptocurrency hit an all-time high of $375.29 on Tuesday and has risen more than 7,000 percent since the start of the year.
Amount sold ‘did not crash the market’
The litecoin founder did not disclose the amount of tokens sold Wednesday but said it was a “small percentage” of daily volume on the cryptocurrency exchange GDAX and “did not crash the market.”
Lee even said he had been accused of trying to manipulate people into buying bitcoin cash, a bitcoin spin-off which split from the original blockchain back in August.
“Some people even think I’m pumping Bcash (bitcoin cash) for my personal benefit,” he said in the post on Reddit.
“It seems like I just can’t win.” Bitcoin cash’s price rise was surrounded in controversy Wednesday after Coinbase launched support for the digital currency.
The feature has been taken down temporarily due to “significant volatility,” according to the cryptocurrency exchange.
The venue subsequently said it would look into claims of insider trading after it was revealed that the price of bitcoin cash rose hours before it launched the feature.