Litecoin’s Charlie Lee: Crypto Bear Markets Are a ‘Good Time to Get Stuff Done’

Litecoin (LTC) creator Charlie Lee has dismissed short-term price trends as the upshot of “speculation,” stressing that long-term valuation is a truer measure of crypto’s success, in a CNBC interview August 27.

When asked to what extent price is a meaningful metric for a given cryptocurrency, and whether or not it reflects the current state of its network, adoption, or viability, Lee responded that:

“In the long-term, [price] tells us the success of cryptocurrencies, but short-term it doesn’t really tell us much. For example this year, there’s been so much adoption in Bitcoin and Litecoin, but their price has dropped 60-70 percent. It’s because it’s so volatile, it’s all about speculation these days, but in the future the price will reflect the success of the currencies.”

Lee noted that it was “hard to predict” when 2018’s bear market would turn, saying that having been in the space for seven years, he has seen positive momentum at times return within half a year – at others, only within three or four years.

He emphasized, however, that bear markets are in fact a good moment for developers and the crypto community to buckle down and focus on technological development, reaching adoption, and tackling challenges such as scalability:

“I’d like to see more [talk around] Lightning Network and sidechains, ways of helping Bitcoin and Litecoin to scale. I think with the price depressed, it’s actually a good time for people to […] get stuff done. That’s what I’ve seen in the past few bear markets actually.”

Lee also responded to CNBC reporter Melissa Lee’s question about his own decision to sell off his Litecoin holdings, explaining that he chose to do so due to “conflict of interest,” and that, accordingly, he wouldn’t be buying the altcoin back – not soon, perhaps not ever.

In an interview with Cointelegraph this February, Lee had further characterized the move to sell as his “first step” away from the project, a stance he later reaffirmed as necessary in order to ensure that Litecoin would become a fully decentralized cryptocurrency, true to the spirit of Bitcoin’s anonymous character with its notoriously absent creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

As of press time, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $7,045, down just a quarter of a percent on the day, with Litecoin (LTC) trading at $63, up a solid 3.1 percent over the same time frame.