Charlie Lee

Charlie Lee is a programmer and founder of the Litecoin cryptocurrency. He is engaged in the popularization of digital currencies and is an expert in various areas of blockchain. He appears on television from time to time and often publishes posts on cryptocurrency topics on his social media accounts.

Early years

Charlie Lee was born in 1977 in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa. When he was 13 years old, he moved with his family to the United States, where he finished school. In 2000, Lee earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Career

The future founder of Litecoin got excellent grades at the institute, and his master’s degree gave him additional chances to get a prestigious job. In the same year, 2000, Lee got a job at one of the local companies Kana Communications, where he developed software for 2 years. Later, Lee took a job as a senior developer at Gudewire Software, where he worked for over 4 years.

In 2007, Charlie was hired by Google to work on YouTube and Chrome projects. Some resources also indicate that Charlie worked for Microsoft, but his official Linkedin page does not contain such information. While working at Google, Lee «got acquainted» with cryptocurrencies — Charlie saw information about bitcoin in one of the technology publications of the time.

Already in 2011, the developer became the author of his own payment network based on cryptocurrency, which he called Litecoin. He began to call himself SatoshiLite in honor of the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Passionate about his project and cryptocurrencies, in 2013, Charlie decided to leave Google and start working at the cryptocurrency company Coinbase, which at that time was one of the most popular trading platforms for digital coins. At Coinbase, Lee worked in various product development positions, but resigned in June 2017 (when his Litecoin project began to develop actively).

Charlie Lee with Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong

After reading about bitcoin in a publication, Lee became interested in the idea of creating his own cryptocurrency. With his experience in trading precious metals (gold, silver, etc.), he compared BTC to gold, preferring digital assets.

In 2010, Charlie met one of the Bitcoin developers, Mike Hearn, who worked with Gavin Andresen. He explained to Lee the basic principles of working with bitcoin and sold him 100 BTC coins. Within a few months of productive work, Lee created his own cryptocurrency, Litecoin. (At the same time, Charlie Lee was mining BTC).

Litecoin is a cryptocurrency that is a fork and an almost complete analog of bitcoin, except for some changes in the block structure that make cryptocurrency transactions faster and cheaper. Its distinctive features are the scrypt algorithm (instead of SHA256), block generation time (reduced by 4 times), and the number of coins (4 times more than in bitcoin). Charlie Lee himself calls his cryptocurrency «silver that complements and makes transactions with gold-bitcoin more convenient.»

The Litecoin Network is a system based on the Lightning Network principle that allows for fast transactions of litecoins between users, as well as their conversion into bitcoins and other digital currencies. «Litecoin is my life’s work. I’ve invested more in it than those who have one million LTC,» Charlie Lee said earlier.

Charlie Lee at his workplace

• Before creating Litecoin, Lee launched the Fairbix project, which was developed in September 2011 and modeled after Bitcoin and Tenebrix. Although Fairbrix did not achieve the expected success (due to mining problems and software bugs), it was not a wasted effort. Charlie Lee took the proof-of-work protocol from Fairbix as a basis for Litecoin.
• In 2018, Charlie Lee sold all his savings in LTC and donated the proceeds in fiat to charity. It is interesting that the day before, the crypto community accused Lee of manipulating the Litecoin exchange rate, so, according to Lee, in order to focus on the development of the project and not to raise the price in the short term, he gave all the funds to charity. At the time, members of the crypto community did not appreciate Lee’s «gesture of goodwill,» and as a result, the value of LTC dropped.

Litecoin founder takes a photo with a fan

• Charlie Lee is an active Twitter user: at the time of writing, his account has more than 1 million followers. On his page, Charlie talks about Litecoin’s innovations, trading volumes, and makes various announcements.
• Charlie is not the only child in the family. He has a brother, Bobby, who is known in the crypto world as a co-founder of the BTCC exchange (in 2014, the exchange became the largest in terms of sales).

Charlie Lee with his brother Bobby, founder of BTC China