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creationlayer
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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 7:40 pm

Hi Charlie,

I understand first and foremost your position is to keep the Coinbase machine running smoothly. Do you find it's tough to make time to innovate and do experiments on new ways to use this technology? Do you have any opinion on Blockstream's proposed implementation in terms of performance or security improvements? I won't ask if coinbase is considering :)
Yes, Coinbase has been spending most of our resources addressing the current use cases of Bitcoin: trading, storing, and spending. Next year, we plan to spend a bit more time innovating and thinking up new ways to push this technology. Will see if we can come up with the next killer app!

Which of Blockstream's product are you referring to?
Blockstream has announced a sidechain for exchanges, although it's disputed if it's really a sidechain persey. It's basically a closed cryptographic system for settlement between exchanges. http://www.coindesk.com/blockstream-com ... exchanges/ I saw a number of other exchanges mention they would use this.
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
-Alan Turing

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2drewlee
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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 7:54 pm

Hi Charlie,

Given you invented Litecoin, have you ever considered starting your own company? If so, can you share any ideas?

Thanks for doing the AMA!
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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 8:24 pm

Hi Charlie,

Can you speak to the resources being devoted to Coinbase Merchants. Is there any focus by the engineering team to building this out more? How has this been received by other developers and the merchants who use these services?

How many merchants use Instant Exchange to convert the currency locally to avoid price volatility and what % would you say actually keep their revenues in Bitcoin?

Thanks!

2DaHilt
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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 9:06 pm

How would you answer those who say you are not really committed to Litecoin because you are only involved part-time in the project and haven't done any innovation since Litecoin was launched? Don`t you think your persona is rather overrated since you didn't do much rather than forking and tweaking Bitcoin a bit.

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coblee
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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:23 pm

Hi Charlie,

are there plans that Litecoin adds some anonymity features in the future? i guess people would love this.

LiteCoinGuy
I'm always open to that. I think the work Greg Maxwell is doing with confidential transactions is pretty cool.

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coblee
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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:29 pm

What's your opinion on the following technologies and which would you prefer if Litecoin were to suddenly have the same block size issue:
  • BIP100
    BIP101
    BIP1**
    Lighting Network
Are you in favour of a hardfork to change the version number of multi-sig addresses. (Are you aware that many people are sending LTC to BTC multi-sig addresses?)

What services do you hope Litecoin should have in the next year? (so I mean do you think LTC ATM will be available, and other technologies?)

Where would you like to see the LitecoinAssociation go in terms of supporting and branding Litecoin? What do you think they can do to improve?

And of course, Litecoin at Coinbase?
1) I prefer Lightening Network over increasing the block size limit.

2) I am in favor of fixing the multi-sig address prefix to something different than Bitcoin.

3) I believe there are already a few LTC ATMs available. I think Litecoin needs more wallet choices. I would love to see more desktop, mobile, and web wallets developer for Litecoin. Litecoin services are useless if there's no easy way to hold and transact Litecoin.

4) I think Litecoin Association can do more to foster the Litecoin community, help developers with developing Litecoin services, and help convince merchants and merchant processors to accept Litecoin for payment.

5)
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coblee
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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:30 pm

Hi Charlie,

Would you ever counsel Litecoin as an investment?
No, please do your own due diligence as to whether or not to invest in Litecoin. :)

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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:32 pm


1) I plan to travel to HK/Taiwan/Shanghai next month. And I've asked Bobby Lee, my brother, to help me plan some stuff. What do you have in mind that I could be doing when I'm there?
2) Litecoin adoption is being pushed by the Litecoin Association and less by me. Though I tweet and give talks about it whenever I can.
3) Yes, Warren is still the lead developer of Litecoin.
4) Unfortunately, most people are motivated by greed. So they will participate if there's a potential reward. A higher Litecoin price will always encourage people to participate more.
5) Litecoin is already playing the role of helping Bitcoin with transaction throughput. See this recent post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/commen ... _become_a/
6) I think Ethereum has a ton of potential. The strength of Bitcoin/Litecoin is in transaction of currency and store of value. There's room for Ethereum to be much more than that.
Hi Charlie,
Thank you very much for your answer.
I think it is important to get in touch with the chinese community for example,asking what their concerns,fears and wishes are and to ask what they can and want to do for the Coin and what the problems are.Maybe you can do a AMA there as well. To be honest,i know nothing about the chinese litecoin community and it is the big unknown for me ,but i think there exists enough untapped potential to be discovered.Litecoin is very popular in China,which is something we can build on.
Maybe there is even a way to establish a constant communication channel between the Litecoin-Communitys to work more closely together in the future and share ideas. I'm looking forward to it.
Great to hear that Warren is still on board.

Have a nice evening

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coblee
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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:33 pm

1. Why did Litecoin choose to use the same version byte for Pay-to-Script-Hash as Bitcoin is using?
2. Is there any plan to change this soon?

This seems to result in confusion where users will attempt to send Litecoins to a Pay-to-Script-Hash address that is intended to be used for bitcoins (or vice-versa).
1) It was a bug, an oversight. Really sorry that happened!

2) Yes, it would require a hard fork though.

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coblee
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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:37 pm


Yes, Coinbase has been spending most of our resources addressing the current use cases of Bitcoin: trading, storing, and spending. Next year, we plan to spend a bit more time innovating and thinking up new ways to push this technology. Will see if we can come up with the next killer app!

Which of Blockstream's product are you referring to?
Blockstream has announced a sidechain for exchanges, although it's disputed if it's really a sidechain persey. It's basically a closed cryptographic system for settlement between exchanges. http://www.coindesk.com/blockstream-com ... exchanges/ I saw a number of other exchanges mention they would use this.
Blockstream's Liquid network is interesting. Coinbase is not going to use it at launch because the cost/benefit is not clear to us. There is definitely a benefit to having a instant bitcoin transfer network. But Bitcoin is already fast enough. The bottleneck is fiat transfer speed. And Liquid's solution to fiat transfer still has counterparty risks. Will definitely follow it closely after it launches.

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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:38 pm

Hi Charlie,

Given you invented Litecoin, have you ever considered starting your own company? If so, can you share any ideas?

Thanks for doing the AMA!
Yes, though I don't have any ideas currently. If I think of something compelling, I would do it.

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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:43 pm

Hi Charlie,

Can you speak to the resources being devoted to Coinbase Merchants. Is there any focus by the engineering team to building this out more? How has this been received by other developers and the merchants who use these services?

How many merchants use Instant Exchange to convert the currency locally to avoid price volatility and what % would you say actually keep their revenues in Bitcoin?

Thanks!
The bitcoin merchant business is a tough one. As can be seen from the difficulties at BitPay. This is a chicken and egg problem. Paying with bitcoin needs to be simpler and cheaper than paying with credit cards. It currently is neither simpler (qr codes) or cheaper (no rebates). Until it is simpler and cheaper, people won't use it. If people don't use it, there are no incentives for merchants to accept it. Those that do are doing it mainly for marketing purposes. And there's no reason for them to pass along their savings to their users. Without a discount, there's no reason for users to purchase bitcoin just to spend it.

The way to break this chicken and egg problem is to get bitcoins into the hands of users in the first place. So we are focusing a lot of our engineering efforts in doing that. Make Coinbase the easiest place to buy bitcoin.

Most of the larger businesses convert to fiat because they run their business in fiat and cannot take volatility risks. A lot of the smaller merchants do keep bitcoin as they are bitcoin supporters and believe in it.

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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:50 pm

How would you answer those who say you are not really committed to Litecoin because you are only involved part-time in the project and haven't done any innovation since Litecoin was launched? Don`t you think your persona is rather overrated since you didn't do much rather than forking and tweaking Bitcoin a bit.
I'm committed to cryptocurrency. I'm into Bitcoin as much as I'm into Litecoin. I know that in order for cryptocurrency to succeed, Bitcoin needs to be adopted by the mass first. And that's why I'm focusing most of my time on Bitcoin currently. When I feel that my time is best spent on Litecoin, I will do that.

I don't rate myself. It's up to the community to decide how valuable my contributions are to this space. As for just "forking and tweaking Bitcoin", let's just say that I put in a lot of hard work to create Litecoin and help Litecoin grow.

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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Tue Nov 10, 2015 10:51 pm


1) I plan to travel to HK/Taiwan/Shanghai next month. And I've asked Bobby Lee, my brother, to help me plan some stuff. What do you have in mind that I could be doing when I'm there?
2) Litecoin adoption is being pushed by the Litecoin Association and less by me. Though I tweet and give talks about it whenever I can.
3) Yes, Warren is still the lead developer of Litecoin.
4) Unfortunately, most people are motivated by greed. So they will participate if there's a potential reward. A higher Litecoin price will always encourage people to participate more.
5) Litecoin is already playing the role of helping Bitcoin with transaction throughput. See this recent post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/commen ... _become_a/
6) I think Ethereum has a ton of potential. The strength of Bitcoin/Litecoin is in transaction of currency and store of value. There's room for Ethereum to be much more than that.
Hi Charlie,
Thank you very much for your answer.
I think it is important to get in touch with the chinese community for example,asking what their concerns,fears and wishes are and to ask what they can and want to do for the Coin and what the problems are.Maybe you can do a AMA there as well. To be honest,i know nothing about the chinese litecoin community and it is the big unknown for me ,but i think there exists enough untapped potential to be discovered.Litecoin is very popular in China,which is something we can build on.
Maybe there is even a way to establish a constant communication channel between the Litecoin-Communitys to work more closely together in the future and share ideas. I'm looking forward to it.
Great to hear that Warren is still on board.

Have a nice evening
Sounds good. I will definitely try to do an AMA in China.

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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Wed Nov 11, 2015 12:38 pm

Speaks in general - Bitcoin is a gold, Litecoin is silver. What do you think about this comparison?

yyhsieh
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Interview on Litecoin

Fri Jul 01, 2016 5:00 pm

Hi Charles,

I am Ying-Ying, a PhD Candidate at Ivey Business School.
I have been researching on the nature of and comparisons between cryptocurrency platforms. In particular I am interested in how trust is distributed by a decentralized network without institutions and organizations, and how it varies across technologies.

I am writing to see if it is possible to conduct a 60-90 min interview with you, as Litecoin stands as a very interesting case in my study. Would love to gain more insights on Litecoin from the founder himself!

Below please find the website for our project led by my advisor, JP Vergne, FYR:
http://www.cryptocapitalism.center/

Thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing from you!

Regards,
Ying-Ying


Ying-Ying Hsieh
PhD Candidate, Ivey Business School
Strategy| General Management
Yhsieh.phd@ivey.ca

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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Fri Jul 08, 2016 10:57 am

the AMA ended some months ago. maybe you should contact Charlie via Email instead.
********************************************
More informations about Bitcoin and scaling BTC on

bitcoin.org/en/

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/c ... reases-faq

&
reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/


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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Wed Oct 12, 2016 5:35 am

I will probably the voice of many bitcoin users and this is for sure not a nice question, but :

Why do you still work for a shitty company like Coinbase ?

PS : I did my best to stay polite.

AliBaba
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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Sat Feb 04, 2017 9:37 pm

Hello Mr. Charlie Lee,

I am Ali Baba. I want to know how you come to the Bitcoin ?
and when you have planned to create Litecoin?

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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Sat Feb 25, 2017 10:09 pm

Regarding Segwit, because of the support Bitcoin Unlimited is currently experiencing, do you see any risk of Bitcoin splitting in 2017?
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We Accept Bitcoin and Altcoins

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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Sun Feb 18, 2018 6:43 pm

Cool, thank you for this AMA

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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Sun Mar 18, 2018 8:47 pm

I love your work. Thank you

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Re: I'm Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin & Director of Engineering at Coinbase. Ask me anything!

Thu Mar 29, 2018 3:19 am

Hi Charlie,
I have just joined up here hoping to find some help. I am fairly new to this game and even earlier I bought some etherium in readyness of buying some ICO's. I purchased the etherium through Coinbase no problem then I needed to send the etherium to a wallet that was ERC20 friendly which I think I did but the problem I have now is that I can't find how to transfer the etherium to where I want to send it. generally there is a send button but the only way I can see my wallet as I don't really know where it is is if I go to etherscan and search for it. It shows up there with my etherium in tact but I can't see how to retrieve it. this is hard to explain fully on here so if there is anyone in Brisbane who coulld possibly give me some advice I would appreciate it. I am happy to give my email address followed up by a phone number if you can help.
Regards
Keith

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