Charlie Lee Sums Up Litecoin’s 10 Years History. Part One: Fair Launch
October 08 2021 - 6:03AM
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The creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, is ready to celebrate the
coin’s 10th anniversary. What better way to do it than by giving
the public the oral history of Litecoin. Of course, that’s a figure
of speech. Since it’s 2021, he gave us that “oral history” through
a Twitter thread. And what a thread it is. It takes us back to the
very beginning of the cryptocurrency space and, using documentation
and images, lets us in on the secrets, the inner jokes, and the
wholesomeness of times past. Related Reading | Led By Litecoin,
Mid-Cap Altcoins Bleed With Bitcoin In this first installment,
Charlie Lee will cover the most crucial part of the story:
Litecoin’s fair launch. Buckle up people, it’s going to be a wild
ride! Charlie Lee On Altcoin’s Prehistory A lot of projects saw the
light of day after Bitcoin and before Litecoin. He names:
Namecoin. Ixcoin Iocoin Solidcoin Tenebrix And somberly
declares, “Every one of these coins are now dead.” According to
Charlie Lee, the reason for their demise was a lack of fairness.
“Most of these altcoins have a huge premine. Tenebrix for example
had 7 million coins premined. That means the creator has incentives
to pump the coin to a high price so he/she can profit massively
without much work.” Most of these altcoins have a huge
premine. Tenebrix for example had 7 million coins premined. That
means the the creator has incentives to pump the coin to a high
price so he/she can profit massively without much work. You get
things like creators bribing exchanges for listing. — Charlie Lee
(@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021 Then, Charlie Lee gives us the
definition of “Ninja mining.” “If a coin was not premined, you get
things like ninja mining. That’s when a coin is released silently
to friends and family.” And tells us that some of those projects
launched without releasing the source code to the public. The
kicker, of course, is that Litecoin was a response to all of that
nonsense. Fairness was crucial, and it’s the main reason the
project still exists today. LTC price chart for 10/08/2021 on
Kraken | Source: LTC/USD on TradingView.com Litecoin’s Prehistory
After Charlie Lee settled on the name Litecoin, his first action
was to buy all the related domains. “What a great move in
hindsight. So now, we don’t have something like http://litecoin.com
promoting Litecoin Cash instead of Litecoin. $38.85 well spent!”
Shots fired! Friendly shots, though, but shots nonetheless. The
best part was that all the domains were available. So on 10/4/11, I
bought them all on GoDaddy. What a great move in hindsight. So now,
we don't have something like https://t.co/TFymqt9pKY promoting
Litecoin Cash instead of Litecoin. $38.85 well spent! 😂
pic.twitter.com/ur0ckkHMsh — Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7,
2021 An interesting fact that Lee gives us is that, even though
coding the coin was easy, the hardest thing to create was the
genesis block. “The hardest part was actually to create the genesis
block. Satoshi never documented how he did it and the code to do
that was not checked in with the Bitcoin source code.” So, he did
“some reverse engineering” and created this block right here. And
then, Charlie Lee gives us another amazing factoid. “What a lot of
people didn’t know is that I put the headline of Steve Job’s death
in the genesis hash. This proves that the genesis block was created
after 10/5/11.” So I had to do some reverse engineering and managed
to create the genesis block on 10/7/11https://t.co/lArbbucLGU What
a lot of people didn't know is that I put the headline of Steve
Job's death in the genesis hash. This proves that the genesis block
was created after 10/5/11. pic.twitter.com/Zn7tnRBgUM — Charlie Lee
(@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021 Litecoin’s launch thread in the
legendary Bitcointalk forums is an archeological artifact from
forgotten times. The story starts with: “Litecoin is the result of
some of us who joined together on IRC in an effort to create a real
alternative currency similar to Bitcoin. We wanted to make a
coin that is silver to Bitcoin’s gold. Various alternative
currencies have come and gone. Some brought innovation, but
they all had problems.” A hilarious story is that a young Vitalik
Buterin hated the Litecoin name and said so in the launch thread: I
forgot to mention that I chose Litecoin because Litecoin is the
lighter version of Bitcoin. It's faster, cheaper, and easier to
use. And we got to see a young & unknown (at the time)
@VitalikButerin hating on the name. I prefer Litecoin over
Etherium. Wait, is it Ethereum? 😂 pic.twitter.com/kCLUUNbiel —
Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021 Back to the Twitter
thread, Charlie Lee tells us, “The code was available for anyone to
download and compile. So they can check the code to make sure.” And
later on, that “People were able to immediately mine on testnet to
make sure everything works on their system. This is very
important.” The table was set for… Litecoin’s Fair Launch Since
everyone that wanted to was “prepared to mine at launch,” Litecoin
had the coveted fair launch. “To accomplish this, I of course had
to share the genesis block with everyone. But I can’t just do that
because people can mine a long chain in private from that genesis
block.” And then, Charlie Lee reveals how he hid it. Without those
2 parameters, one cannot start mining on the mainnet, but they can
easily mine on testnet. So I lied, there was a 2 block premine of
100 coins. 😂The genesis coins cannot be spent. Then I did a poll on
what time we should launch the coin:https://t.co/BWvGGFjNBN
pic.twitter.com/AuXkqMB4QT — Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7,
2021 And he confesses, “So I lied, there was a 2 block premine of
100 coins. The genesis coins cannot be spent.” However, he had
already told this to the community in that Bitcointalk thread:
“Litecoin will come with 150 premined coins: just the genesis block
and the first 2 blocks to confirm the genesis is valid.“ Related
Reading | Litecoin Foundation’s Project Director Makes The Case For
LTC’s Network Effect Then, Chalie Lee created a poll to ask the
community when to launch. The option that he wanted didn’t win.
Since fairness was what he aimed for, he prepared everything for
the day the small community had decided. And then, he rickrolled
them! Over the next few days, I did everything to help people get
their system set up. A few minutes before the actual launch time, I
posted this. Of course this was a link to Rick Astley's video. I
had to. 😁 pic.twitter.com/isJIRPhEDv — Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite)
October 7, 2021 Then, he posted the missing configuration
parameters on the Bitcointalk thread and everybody was off to the
races. At launch, I posted the config paramters that were needed to
mine on mainnet. All everyone had to do was paste that into their
litecoin config file, restart their client, and they will be
happily mining real LTC. Of course, there was a mad rush of people
mining LTC at the start. pic.twitter.com/ZyUcQ1UEe3 — Charlie Lee
(@SatoshiLite) October 7, 2021 And, as they say, the rest is
history. To close this chapter, Charlie Lee leaves modesty aside,
“I think I managed to pull off the fairest launch of any coin. And
that is one of the biggest reasons why Litecoin succeeded.
Surprisingly, very very few coins copied Litecoin’s launch.” I
think I managed to pull off the fairest launch of any coin. And
that is one of the biggest reasons why Litecoin succeeded.
Surprisingly, very very few coins copied Litecoin's launch. Ok,
that's it for now. I will tweet more later about what happened
between launch and now. — Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite) October 7,
2021 Tomorrow, join us and Charlie Lee to remember what happened
between the launch and the present. The article is going to be as
full of easter eggs and amazing stories as this one. Featured
Image: Screenshot from the Bitcointalk forums | Charts by
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