← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
The Next BIG Crypto Move? Litecoin Creator Charlie Lee's BOLD Prediction
00:50:28
Loading summary
Transcript253 lines
- [00:00]
A
Today I sat down with Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, to talk about the future of one of the longest running blockchains in the space. We covered everything from Litecoin's identity. In a world dominated by Bitcoin, Ethereum.
- [00:11]
B
And Stablecoins, Litecoin has been the most transacted cryptocurrency, even more so than Bitcoin, Ethereum or any of the stablecoins, to.
- [00:19]
A
How the network has maintained unmatched reliability for more than a decade.
- [00:23]
B
Ever since I launched it in 2011, almost 14 years now, it hasn't had any network issues, which I think is very important for money.
- [00:31]
A
Charlie shared his. His views on payments, adoptions, whether Litecoin needs a new narrative and what he wants its legacy to be.
- [00:37]
B
20 years from now, people use Litecoin and those people that may not even know who I am. It doesn't matter who created Litecoin. It doesn't matter when it was created, why it was created. All that matters is that it's useful to people as money.
- [00:49]
A
It's a candid conversation with one of crypto's true pioneers about where Litecoin fits in today's market and where it's headed next.
- [00:57]
C
That's dope.
- [01:11]
B
Let's go.
- [01:12]
A
So the first question I have is, you've been here since effectively the very beginning. What do you make of the developments of late 24 and 25 where the government has effectively adopted and accepted this technology, this asset class? We have a pro crypto government, we have legislation going our way. As much as that was part of the vision, did you ever think it would really come to fruition and this quickly?
- [01:36]
B
It's been a while.
- [01:37]
C
Right.
- [01:38]
B
So I've been in the space since 2011. Not the beginning, but very early on. Yeah. I think one of the biggest hurdles that I've always seen is the government could crack down on crypto.
- [01:50]
C
Right.
- [01:50]
B
Could kind of ban it, and that would really hinder adoption. So having the US Government really embrace it is something I didn't expect, to be honest. So it's a very, it's very welcoming. Yeah, it's totally kind of a surprise. And it's. It's a very pleasant surprise.
- [02:12]
A
We have this sort of interesting, I guess, bipolarity where certainly in the early days when you came into the space, it was very much libertarian ideals, you know, rage against the machine, against the government. This was a way to opt out. And now we sort of have this situation where people either because they believe it'll help the number go up, or they're just excited to finally be in. The majority are cheering. I guess the adoption by the very entities that they feel it was created to hedge against. How do you feel about that? What do you make of that? Obviously we can see a lot of that on chain. With a lot of the early bitcoin whales finding a reason to sell at these prices.
- [02:52]
B
I would say a lot of people are cheering it on because of the number go up. In theory, I think what bitcoin crypto provides is always ability to opt out.
- [03:04]
C
Right.
- [03:04]
B
Even if the government embraces it. The great part is you can still opt out and do everything on chain and not deal with government bodies, agencies controlling your money. So that's always a feature of crypto and I think that's something that makes it very valuable. Yeah, but you're right, like early on, back when I first got into crypto, I mean, most of the people are libertarian very, very much. I wouldn't say like anti government, but more being able to have control of their own money was, was very important. And that's what bitcoin and crypto provided. And that's, that's still the case today.
- [03:44]
A
So with that being still the case today, where do you think bitcoin crypto in general sort of sit now in the greater landscape versus back then? Obviously back then it was a fringe. Yeah.
- [03:57]
B
I mean, back then, let's say there were like a foul, like in the beginning.
- [04:01]
C
Right.
- [04:01]
B
When, when I started, there's like maybe a thousand people in the whole space.
- [04:05]
C
Right.
- [04:08]
B
When did you actually get into crypto 16.
- [04:10]
A
So much later.
- [04:11]
B
Yeah, yeah. So. And out of the thousand, like 900 word were libertarians.
- [04:18]
A
Right.
- [04:18]
B
So, but, but the space has grown quite a. Right. There's like millions, billions of people in the space right now. So majority of people are not necessarily libertarians, which is fine. So the space has definitely changed quite a lot. So it's not good or bad, but it is kind of the reality.
- [04:37]
A
Yeah, I think that's true. So for you, you're encouraged obviously by all the progress that we've made.
- [04:44]
B
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I've kind of early on, like when I first got into space, I always saw bitcoin as digital gold, as kind of better money, something that is kind of free from government or any corporation control, where government or corporations can inflate away the supply and basically make everyone less wealthy because of that. So that's still the case. And I think, yeah, it's moving towards becoming the reserve asset of the world.
- [05:23]
A
I believe even Larry Fink said that which just blows my mind.
- [05:28]
C
Yes.
- [05:28]
A
You have the CEO of BlackRock who would have been like Darth Vader of the evil Empire five or six years ago to the crypto community saying that if the government keeps treating their debt this way, that something like bitcoin could become the global reserve currency. I mean, the guy sounds like Satoshi Nakamoto. Never thought I'd be in a world where you had that.
- [05:46]
C
Yeah.
- [05:47]
B
I mean, the government's been, or I should say like the Fed's been printing money like crazy the past few years ever since COVID Right. So it's kind of crazy. I mean, throughout history we've all seen like fiat currencies don't really last more than a couple centuries. And the US dollar has been around for a while. And I think the kind of. The strength of the US dollar has been its kind of reserve currency, asset reserve currency status. And that's. But it can only take you so far. Right? You can't just keep printing money. And the great thing is that we have bitcoin, litecoin and cryptocurrencies out there for people to put their kind of wealth in to protect their wealth over time.
- [06:31]
A
And we have this sort of interesting situation now where cycles of the past, obviously you always saw sort of bitcoin move and then there was this massive interest in altcoins and it was sort of, you know, trickle down from the largest market caps down to the lowest market caps. It seems like now almost all the money stays in the stock market or in some sort of, you know, basically any way you can get crypto exposure on legacy markets and hasn't really trickled down so much to the entire altcoin market. Do you think that that is how we can expect things to be in the future? That the majority of the money and interest will be in assets that, that you can gain exposure to, you know, through your Schwab accounts?
- [07:13]
B
Yes and no. I think I would agree the majority would be there. But we'll. We'll still see like the altcoin cycles.
- [07:22]
C
Right.
- [07:22]
B
So I still expect bitcoin to lead the way. And then during the kind of the, the peak of the market, we'll see like the altcoin explosion.
- [07:32]
A
I think it'll still come. I'm just not sure that asset number 1075 on CoinMarketCap will, you know, catch a bit. Again, I don't think we'll be to. I'm not quite sure we'll be able to just throw darts and everything goes up. But I could be wrong.
- [07:45]
B
But that's, that's always been the case.
- [07:47]
C
Right?
- [07:47]
B
There's always, it's always a, there's always going to be coins that don't go up. Yeah, I mean it's, but who knows? I mean this, we've seen like the four year cycles for, I mean I've seen like three or four of those cycles and it's always been consistent and this year it's been doing pretty well. But yeah, who knows if the cycle continues? If the cycles continue.
- [08:11]
A
Yeah. So let's talk about what you're focused on now. Like in context of all of this. We obviously have a better environment. You're obviously still very deeply involved in the space. So what's exciting you? What are you actually spending your time working on?
- [08:22]
B
Yeah, I mean I've always been focused my time on litecoin, kind of litecoin adoption, working on litecoin, making litecoin kind of the best money there is. One of the things I've been working on is a, at least a, a privacy layer. Privacy, fungibility layer on litecoin. One thing that, that's kind of holding litecoin and I would say bitcoin back is, is a fungibility aspect of money.
- [08:48]
C
Right.
- [08:49]
B
I think bitcoin litecoin has been kind of great sound money checking all the boxes except for the fungibility part. And by that I mean the part where every litecoin is equal to every other litecoin. So when you go and spend your coins, you don't have to pick and choose which coin to, to, to spend because they're exactly the same. But that's not the case. So that's what you want with, with good money.
- [09:17]
C
Right.
- [09:18]
B
You want money where every dollar is the same as every dollar, every other dollar. But it's not the case with Bitcoin and previous litecoin because there's history attached to every coin.
- [09:30]
C
Right.
- [09:30]
B
So the, the recipient, whether it's coinbase or, or a coffee shop, could potentially discriminate between the coins you send them and say this is not good money because it came from a darknet marketplace, let's say, and it's not really well accepted and they can ban you or, or block the purchase and that's not what you want with good money. So that part is very important. Fungibility. And with fungibility what's required is privacy. One thing we've been working on with litecoin is adding the M Web kind of layer on top of litecoin which adds mimblewimble, which is a privacy protocol. So what it does is makes the coin more private, more fungible by making the amount blinded. So only the recipient and the sender knows how much was sent. So this is very, very important. Like right now, if I pay for, if I get my salary in Litecoin, for example, everyone can see on the blockchain how many, how much money I make a month or they can kind of deduce that.
- [10:34]
C
Right.
- [10:34]
B
So that's not very cool for, for privacy of money and privacy for yourself.
- [10:39]
C
Right.
- [10:40]
B
For a financial privacy. So having blinded amounts is very important and also kind of keeping others from seeing like where you're spending money, where the money is coming from is very important for privacy manageability. So that's something that we've been working on trying to just, just trying to make Litecoin kind of a better form of money.
- [10:57]
A
Does that in any way erase effectively the history? Because obviously the privacy is a huge aspect. Everybody agrees that nobody should see your bank transactions, for example. Right. So knowing exactly what I sent to you, how much and why is a huge violation of privacy. But specifically with Bitcoin and I don't know for Litecoin, but what you're talking about is like if a bitcoin was sent from North Korea, they're going to know that. Or if a bitcoin was mined dirty. Right. We could even have a future where it's like only green bitcoin are accepted. Something like that that's been talked about. So does this erase that history effectively or at least obfuscate it away so that people can transact without worrying about what somebody did with that specific token in the past?
- [11:40]
B
Yeah, it's to a certain degree, yes, but it's not full complete privacy. So certain coins are doing like better, I would say like better privacy than, than m Web, but it's, there's trade offs with that. So I think for, for Litecoin we're kind of striking the middle, middle ground where it's enough privacy to make it fungible. And so if you're doing something like it's enough for, for everyday use, I would say where people don't have to worry about kind of being tracked and also how much money they're exposing, how much money they're sending to, who.
- [12:19]
A
So what then are the other steps that Litecoin or any other needs to go through effectively to reach another level of adoption? Right. I'm not going to say like full mainstream adoption for billions of people, but I would assume that, you know, there's always kind of the next step and the next Step and the next step.
- [12:39]
B
Kind of getting the word out there is very important.
- [12:41]
C
Right.
- [12:42]
B
So there, like you said, there's like thousands of altcoins out there.
- [12:45]
C
Right.
- [12:45]
B
So how does, what makes Litecoin different? Just kind of getting the word out there, getting people to use it, making it very easy for people to access Litecoin. Whether it's like, buy Litecoin from exchanges, buy from Coinbase or where, wherever, and also be able to spend it.
- [13:03]
C
Right.
- [13:03]
B
Having like a very good mobile wallet or many different mobile wallets where they can spend their coins, have their coins, use M Web for privacy and fungibility and all that, just making it very easy for people to use is extremely important. Also having places where people can spend their coins.
- [13:21]
C
Right.
- [13:22]
B
So BitPay, for example, is one of the largest crypto payment processors. They make it very easy for merchants to accept crypto and have it automatically converted to their fiat currency of choice if they want to.
- [13:34]
C
Yeah.
- [13:35]
B
And on BitPay over the past year and a half, Litecoin has been the most transacted cryptocurrency.
- [13:41]
C
Really?
- [13:41]
B
Yeah. Even more so than Bitcoin, Ethereum or any of the stable coins. So that's very, very nice to see. It's because people, because Litecoin is easy to use, it's fast and cheap.
- [13:55]
A
It's also never gone down correct.
- [13:58]
B
Ever since I launched it in 2011, almost 14 years now, it hasn't had any network issues, which. Which I think is very important for. For money.
- [14:09]
C
Right.
- [14:09]
B
You don't want. Well, you can't really have the network go down on you when, when you're trying to buy coffee, for example. So it may not be the. It may not be that important for some other coins, but for a coin like Litecoin and even Bitcoin, that is acting as a store of value and also means of exchange, it's very important that the network is always up and it always works.
- [14:34]
A
It seems like Litecoin is always one of the first to be adopted by any new platform. I don't know if it's because you were so early or you had more clarity on the commodity security issue, but I mean, it's not just BitPay. PayPal, I believe. Right. Venmo. I mean, Litecoin is pretty widely available for people who want to use it. I'm sure there's always steps to be more available, but it's one of the ones that's always.
- [14:59]
B
Yeah, I think it's. It's a combination of both being early one of the early coins and Also just being reliable and like you said, the commodity aspect of it.
- [15:10]
C
Right.
- [15:10]
B
There's no, there's no to very little question about whether or not litecoin is a security. And alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum has also gotten kind of gotten there. I would say Ethereum in the beginning was much more so in a security, but it has been kind of grandfathered in as a commodity. So bitcoin, litecoin, Ethereum, to a certain.
- [15:32]
A
Degree, it's always bitcoin, bitcoin, cash.
- [15:36]
B
So these four have been kind of. Has kind of a certain status of just longevity and also commodity status. So a lot of sites like PayPal, Venmo, when they launch initially, they would pick these four or maybe three or the four and launch with them. So litecoin has kind of benefited from that. And that's great to see. And Litecoin, you see it on CNBC and other mainstream media all the time. Whenever they talk about cryptocurrencies, they show the litecoin ticker symbol. And it's kind of. It's gotten a lot of exposure with mainstream. With retail, and I think that's great.
- [16:13]
A
So I think the biggest narrative right now in crypto going back to legacy market exposure has obviously been treasury companies. Right. And litecoin has been a part of that, obviously. Mei Pharma, meip, which I believe you're on the board of directors. Right. Is that the. I haven't dug too deeply into how many treasury companies there are for each asset, but I would imagine the leading treasury company for litecoin right now.
- [16:35]
B
That's correct. There's. There's. There's one out there. There's. There's one in. In Canada, but in. In the US the largest market, MEIP is, is the biggest one. And yeah, I've been involved with them since the beginning. Well, not with the company, but once they started deciding to do the Litecoin treasury strategy, I've been involved with them and I'm on their board of directors.
- [16:58]
A
So how is that business now currently structured? Right. Because there's always. I think people are confused as to how these happen. There's reverse mergers, there's SPACs, there's some companies that are basically a shell in. The treasury company becomes the entire operating business. And then there's companies who actually have a business and are just adding the asset to their balance sheet, or there's sort of two businesses within one shell. So how is this actually structured? And what was the process like, I guess, of starting it?
- [17:24]
B
Yeah, so this was structured as A As a pipe investment. So MEIP was originally a pharma company.
- [17:33]
C
Right.
- [17:33]
B
A healthcare company. They decided to pivot into a litecoin strategy. Litecoin treasury strategy company. So we got $100 million invested into the company and using that hundred million dollars to buy litecoin. So right now the. The company has a little bit over $100 million worth of Litecoin, a little bit over 1% of all the. All litecoin in existence. And yeah, it's a, it's a Treasury play. So I'm on the board. We're looking into other ways to kind of provide value, like maybe in terms of like mining litecoin and other things that can help the ecosystem and also help the bottom line for the company.
- [18:17]
A
It's always interesting to me how these companies form and how they choose which asset they want to make their treasury asset and why. So I guess why is Litecoin a viable treasury asset? What was the specific interest there? And, you know, how does that work?
- [18:33]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, there are like dozens, if not more Bitcoin and Ethereum Treasuries.
- [18:39]
C
Right.
- [18:40]
B
So doing another one of those is kind of a. Me too. That didn't really seem very attractive, like litecoin being especially bitcoin, Litecoin being one of the oldest cryptocurrencies and clearly a commodity and a asset class.
- [18:58]
C
Right.
- [18:58]
B
And made a lot of sense to. To be the first and to be kind of the litecoin treasury company.
- [19:10]
A
So.
- [19:11]
B
Yeah. So with all that and also with my involvement, it kind of made sense to you to do this. I felt like having something like this would be good for litecoin. It's also with the etf, like the litecoin ETF being kind of on the horizon, but it's been pushed back quite a bit. So having something like this to kind of fulfill the needs of the institutional demand for litecoin as an asset class made a lot of sense. And also I think a company like this could help out with Litecoin itself with a kind of a huge investment in Litecoin. They're very incentivized to. To help the coin itself grow in terms of adoption and also price. So I think it's a. It's definitely a win, win partnership.
- [19:58]
A
Yeah. Because it's always this balancing act, I think with treasury companies with whatever asset, on whether you're offering exposure to somebody who couldn't get it before. I think that was the microstrategy initial playbook. Right. We didn't have Bitcoin ETFs maybe we had GBTC, but before the ETFs, the reason people bought MicroStrategy basically was for bitcoin exposure when they couldn't get get it right. So I've got to imagine there's still a lot of people out there who are certainly institutions that either can't because of the way they're structured or just wouldn't buy the underlying asset because of custody and things like that. So is this basically a vehicle to offer exposure like MicroStrategy was sort of in the early days to the asset, since it doesn't have an ETF yet and some people aren't going to buy spot.
- [20:44]
B
Yeah, it is, or something. A lot of people, not that they won't buy spot, they can't really access the spot market. So this is definitely a vehicle for exposure to the asset class for a lot of people.
- [20:58]
A
And so who are the people right now that fit that mold specifically? Is it foreign investors, is it companies in the United States? Is it sovereign wealth insurance companies? Who do you think is the most interested in this sort of vehicle?
- [21:16]
B
I would say it would be like the investors that are kind of interested in getting to crypto.
- [21:23]
C
Right.
- [21:23]
B
And are very familiar. They obviously aren't able to. The ones that aren't able to kind of use crypto exchanges or store their own crypto in hardware wallets would use a vehicle like this. That would be safe way to invest in Litecoin.
- [21:40]
A
So you mentioned hardware wallets. There's this just because I have you, there is obviously the not your keys, not your coins ethos that still remains in crypto, but was very, very, very much more a part of it in the early days. Now, to some degree, many will argue that exchanges have really upped their security massively. There's a lot more compelling ways to custody your coins just generally. Now, where do you stand on the self custody versus hot wallet versus cold wallet versus using exchanges, Especially I guess when it comes to Litecoin, I think.
- [22:13]
B
The most important thing is always that you have the option of custodying yourself.
- [22:20]
C
Right.
- [22:21]
B
This is not the case for most other assets.
- [22:23]
C
Right.
- [22:25]
B
So having the option to do it yourself gives you, gives you power, makes it valuable. So you can always custody your, your coins with an exchange or somewhere else.
- [22:37]
C
Right.
- [22:38]
B
But just having the option you can always pull the coins out and put into your own hardware wallet and protect it yourself is kind of key to why crypto is so powerful.
- [22:49]
A
So when a new person comes in at this point, what is the general recommendation on how they should Gain exposure to litecoin. Like, you know, an average person says, I've been doing my research on crypto, I want some litecoin in my portfolio. We still have treasury company, we'll probably have an ETF soon, right? You can just go buy it, Spot. There's people who will find a way to leverage it one way or another. And then there's, I'll keep it on Coinbase, I'll keep it on Kraken, you know, or I'll go find some deeper way to multi sig this. How do you recommend that people, I guess, get started?
- [23:22]
B
Well, see, that's, that's the best thing, right? There's like a lot more options today than there was a while ago, right? When I first started with Bitcoin in 2011, the kind of, the only way to access Bitcoin is if you download the Bitcoin client, Bitcoin QT client on your computer and then store the coins yourselves, right. With possibly a password protected wallet file and buying coins from Mount Gox in Japan, right? So that's. But today, like it depends on your kind of your, your comfort level. Like if I'm talking to someone new who only has a brokerage account, I would say just buy Meip, right? If you want access to Litecoin by Meip. If you want to access to Bitcoin, there's some ETFs you can choose from BlackRock or whatever, or go with MicroStrategy, right? If you want some kind of leverage exposure. So that's easy, right? And then if they feel more comfortable, they can actually buy Spot from Coinbase Kraken or pick your exchange, right, and store the coins there. Like you said, the security has gotten better. I think the FTX implosion has kind of helped clear out the bad actors in the space and you're left with exchanges that are actually very competent at protecting the coins. And so unless you're putting a lot of your wealth in it, if you're just dabbling in it, storing it in Coinbase and Kraken is fine in the short term. And then once they get used to kind of crypto sending, receiving crypto, they can start trying to figure out hardware wallets or using companies like CASA that provides like a solution with multiple hardware wallets to protect your funds. So there are a lot of options, right? And that's the best part of it. Depending on your comfort level, there's a lot to choose from.
- [25:25]
A
We've had this conversation before, but it's been years since you and I Have sat down, actually recorded, not in person, because as I joked, we've seen each other at many conferences and such. But maybe it's worth revisiting why in 2011, when you came in, you were obviously a passionate bitcoiner. This was before there were a lot of ideas to launch new things. What made you want to launch Litecoin? And I guess maybe to put it more in present terms, why are you still sticking with it in 2025? What keeps you excited? What keeps you going? What, you know, what are you looking forward to in the future for it?
- [25:58]
B
Yeah. So back in 2011, I kind of was just. Just got into the space with a software background. I kind of was able to understand the code and see how everything ticks. And I was just playing around the code base. There were quite a few other altcoins out there, and I kind of just decided to just make one myself. And more. More for fun than anything else, just to see if I can do something better than what's out there. And one of the key features of Litecoin is the fair launch. I wanted to make something that was not like pre mined, did not have kind of coins created for the founders to enrich the founder. And so fairness was very important. And I also saw, like, throughout history how silver and gold worked together as money. People would actually spend silver but keep gold as. As kind of the reserve assets, so to speak, for. For themselves. And I saw litecoin being positioned as silver to bitcoin's gold. And that was kind of the interesting thing about it, having both bitcoin and litecoin kind of work together instead of competing against each other. And so, yeah, so that's how it kind of litecoin came about. And it became wildly successful, much more so than I expected. And, yeah, kind of stuck with it.
- [27:21]
C
It's like.
- [27:22]
A
So it's like I built this thing now. People really like it. I better take this kind of.
- [27:26]
C
Right.
- [27:26]
B
I mean, if litecoin kind of just sputtered and kind of failed, it would just be.
- [27:30]
C
No.
- [27:30]
B
Okay, cool. That was interesting. I learned something new. Yeah. And then I worked at Coinbase for four years, and then in 2017, I decided to kind of focus my energy back on litecoin and kind of. Yeah, it's been a wild ride, I would say.
- [27:49]
A
Do you still view it with the gold silver narrative? I mean, to some degree, at that time, stablecoins weren't a thing yet. Right. So bitcoin was kind of slow and clunky and could be expensive. And litecoin offered a much faster, obviously and cheaper way to do what bitcoin could do. Right. But to do it better, it seems like now we have digital fiat. Right? And you could do that fast and cheap, but it's still fiat.
- [28:17]
B
I mean that's, that's the point, right? It's still fiat. So it's not gold or silver. It's not like a commodity. It's not something that the government can control. It's still Stablecoin is still priced in fiat currencies. So if fiat gets inflated away, your stable coin gets inflated away. So yes, it's, it's fast, efficient and useful, but it's still fiat currency. So litecoin is still, I still see the gold and silver analogy. People use litecoin because it's fast and easy to use, fast and cheap. So it's still the case today. And, and I think what stablecoin provides is if, let's say like a, a merchant only accepts fiat currencies in stablecoin, you can easily convert your litecoin or bitcoin, whatever coins you have, into the stable coin of choice and spend it.
- [29:04]
C
Right.
- [29:04]
B
So it makes the kind of the off ramp simpler where people can store the value in whatever is the best form of money, whether it's litecoin, whether it's bitcoin or some other coin and easily spend it. And I think that's key.
- [29:18]
A
Do you still consider yourself to be a bitcoiner or a bitcoin maxi, even though obviously you created and are building on litecoin?
- [29:26]
B
Yeah, I would say so.
- [29:27]
A
I mean I, me too, but they don't allow me.
- [29:31]
B
I always think like bitcoin is the king.
- [29:34]
C
Right.
- [29:35]
B
It's going to be the main cryptocurrency, potentially the world reserve asset.
- [29:40]
C
Right.
- [29:41]
B
And litecoin is kind of the one, two punch of crypto with bitcoin. I think the term bitcoin maxi has kind of changed over time. A lot of like bitcoin maxis or self proclaimed bitcoin maxis are really like, I would call them like bitcoin extremists. They think like it's bitcoin and nothing else. Yeah, fundamentalist, which makes like bitcoin fundamentalists, which is kind of crazy, but it makes no sense at all. You're saying like you're basically giving people zero choice. Right. It's like the only money out there will be bitcoin and nothing else. Like no litecoin, no altcoins, maybe even no fiat currency.
- [30:21]
C
Right.
- [30:22]
B
I don't think that will ever be the Case, I think bitcoin will always be number one, but there will always be choices for people to use other cryptocurrencies.
- [30:30]
A
I agree. The bitcoin maxi conversation for sure. It's interesting because at least anecdotally, when we started seeing these massive sales of Bitcoin, 80,000 by Galaxy and 25,000 recently, these were probably a lot of people that would have been viewed as people who would never sell.
- [30:52]
C
Right.
- [30:52]
A
You know, diamond hands till the end, they made it to 2025, probably from 2009 or 2010, if they're holding that many coins. And something, whether it was just sheer wealth or age, finally triggered some of them, right, to. To sell. I spoke to Bruce Fenton about this. I spoke to Yago, like at the times that they were happening. A lot of kind of guys, I. You get insight on early bitcoin. And they actually said that a lot of them felt disillusioned with what bitcoin had become because of the institutional and government adoption and were like, okay, well, now I'm rich. Bitcoin's not what I wanted it to be, so I'm going to go ahead and cash out. I guess I can understand that. But what I don't understand is how they expected Bitcoin to become the global reserve asset if it didn't go through those.
- [31:38]
B
Exactly.
- [31:39]
A
And gain adoption.
- [31:41]
B
Yeah, I think, like, yeah. I mean, in order for Bitcoin to become what it is today or even to grow bigger, it has to be accepted by everyone.
- [31:52]
C
Right.
- [31:52]
B
So whether you're libertarian or not.
- [31:56]
C
Right.
- [31:56]
B
So I think the most important thing about Bitcoin is that you can always opt out.
- [32:01]
C
Right.
- [32:02]
B
You can always opt out of storing your money with an exchange and just storing it yourself. You can send transactions. So even it doesn't matter who supports it. It doesn't matter if the government embraces it or not. The power is still in the people.
- [32:19]
A
So shifting to actually building, which you kind of alluded to the fact that you did it as an experiment, what would you say to people who now are coming into this space choosing what to build, how to build, where to build? Obviously there's a ton more tools that seemingly we have infinite blockchains, and a lot of those people still choose to build their own blockchains. So the lessons that you've learned, having created litecoin and focused on it for so long, A, would you say, hey, just come build on litecoin? Or B, you know, what advice would you give them building elsewhere?
- [32:51]
B
Good question. I think starting your own coin is really Hard today, obviously. There's just so many out there. Just getting. In hindsight, starting Litecoin in 2011 is. Was quite easy.
- [33:05]
C
Right.
- [33:05]
B
Compared to what it is today. So just kind of, just because there aren't that many out there, it's easy to differentiate yourself from others and getting kind of adoption by, by the, by people back then today. If I, if I were to start Litecoin today, there's no way it would succeed.
- [33:21]
C
Right? Really?
- [33:23]
A
I mean, that was literally like, kind of. My next question was like, okay, let's pretend you didn't do Litecoin in 2011, but you came here with the same excitement in 2025. Would you build it?
- [33:32]
B
I wouldn't. Because there's no way we succeed.
- [33:34]
C
Right.
- [33:34]
B
There's no way to kind of. So the reason why, like Litecoin was fairly launched. There's no, like, it's almost impossible. I would say it's impossible to launch a fairly launched coin today and have it succeed because you, you would just, you just wouldn't have the capital.
- [33:49]
C
Right.
- [33:50]
B
All these coins today are launched with, with pre mines, with VC backing, with millions of dollars. Yeah. With foundations like the Litecoin foundation has very little money.
- [33:59]
C
Right.
- [34:00]
B
Runs off a shoestring budget. Because we didn't print our own coin. We don't have coins to sell, to raise funds. Unlike the Ethereum foundation or any other foundation you can think of. They have millions, even billions in their treasury to kind of hire developers. They can hire hundreds of developers to work on the coin, hire a marketing team and kind of for outreach and just getting, getting the word out there, paying money to get the coins on exchanges, stuff like that. Right. That's not something that you needed to do back then. But today, without the capital, just there's no way you can get the awareness debt at thousand.
- [34:38]
A
The incentives are always misaligned with the currency.
- [34:41]
B
Yeah, I mean the incentives are misaligned in terms of like making it fair money.
- [34:45]
C
Right.
- [34:46]
B
For. For something to be money, it has to be fair, has to be commodity. There's no like, company that controls a lot of it, a lot of the supply, and it kind of, it just doesn't work today anymore. So we have Bitcoin, we have Litecoin, we have a few other coins that kind of fall under that kind of moneyness aspect.
- [35:08]
A
What else do you think falls under the moneyness aspect? Dare I say maybe.
- [35:10]
B
I was saying this aspect.
- [35:12]
A
Even though, even though it's a meme and we maybe can't take it seriously, but it does. The theoretical qualities it should fall in that bucket by those criteria.
- [35:20]
B
Yeah, I, I mean, I agree. I think Doge is. Is a coin that. That would be. It's very fair, like bitcoin, litecoin, Doge, maybe a few others. But the, the main ones would be bitcoin, litecoin, dogecoin.
- [35:34]
A
So what do you make then, you know, through that lens of having been there early, of the ways that people have attempted to launch things, the outright speculative insanity of the Meme Coin cycles, those things. Because obviously when you all were creating this early, I don't think you saw building a huge online casino as part of the future use cases. But obviously speculation has, for better or for worse, driven a lot of the adoption of asset class and the technology. I do think that's changing and maybe that's dying a little bit. But I'm just say that in 2011, I can't imagine you thought that a president would launch a Meme Coin two days before he was inaugurated.
- [36:15]
B
I mean, I still can't believe it.
- [36:16]
C
Today.
- [36:19]
A
Same.
- [36:20]
B
I actually haven't been following how well is Trump Coin doing these days?
- [36:24]
A
Literally. So maybe that says something that neither you and I or I can tell you remotely what the price is at this point. I'm going to look it up while we're talking Trump. Well, now we have to look at World Liberty Financial. Right. Because that launched this week, but it looks like it's eight bucks and at a market cap of 1.68 billion. And that was at 60 billion on the launch.
- [36:45]
B
Yeah, I mean, I heard he.
- [36:47]
A
That is a wild.
- [36:48]
B
I heard he or the team made billions from it. I mean, it's pretty crazy for. I mean, I don't want to pass judgment, but it's kind of crazy for some to see something like that happen. Yeah, it's the world.
- [37:02]
A
What does that say, I guess about the market? That. Right. I get. The question I'm getting at is that that wouldn't have happened unless Meme Coins specifically on Solana. But Meme Coins have become such a huge phenomenon that went so beyond Bitcoin and Litecoin and the original ethos, because even I got in in 2016 and 17. Right. And even for me at that point, even though I didn't really quite understand what I was doing, because I came in trading, you had to buy Bitcoin to go get anything else. There was no stablecoin pairs. So I bought Bitcoin on Gemini or Coinbase. I sent it to Bittrex and that's how I would buy Ethereum and You know, ripple and all these other things that I was very much speculating on the beginning, that's long gone. Like you don't have to touch the early coins anymore to get exposure to the market. I think that's been one of the biggest differences. You just buy a stablecoin or use your credit card, right. And you can go speculate on meme coins and you don't even need to know that bitcoin and litecoin ever existed.
- [37:58]
B
I mean, I think that's like there's always, every cycle, there's. There's euphoria for something, right? Whether it's meme coins, a cycle, whether it's NFTs or ICOs in the one of the earlier cycles, it's always something that. That gets people in the space. And I mean, I think the best part of it is it kind of draws people's like speculation and gambling and stuff like that draws people in. But I hope people actually learn from once they're in, in the space.
- [38:33]
C
Yeah.
- [38:33]
B
And actually learn about sound money, learn about the OGs of cryptos, Bitcoin, litecoin, and see the kind of. The importance of that.
- [38:43]
C
Right.
- [38:43]
B
Even though you might come for meme coin, but you stay for sound money, I would say.
- [38:49]
C
Yeah.
- [38:49]
A
It's funny, I think, you know, I can only speak of it again, like they think it was. You were more inclined back then to find your way back because you were holding bitcoin, right?
- [38:59]
C
You.
- [38:59]
A
You were already holding it to trade. So there was this moment, I remember whatever portfolio app I was using, delta or block folio or whatever the early iterations or those were, where I thought I was making money, you know, and you look at your USD balance and you're like, wow, bitcoin's going up. Alts are kind of whatever. But look at me, my dollar amount's going up. This is great. And then one day I clicked over to the bitcoin balance and I was like, holy shit, I have a lot less bitcoin than I originally bought before I started doing this. And I didn't denominate things in bitcoin, even though it was the base currency of my trading, because I just didn't get it. And that was a real light bulb moment. And then of course, you go through your first bear market and you see that even as bad as bitcoin is, it wildly outperforms everything else and you have this deep belief. And that sent me down. It almost was like coping with watching my portfolio go down in the first bear market made me go justify the fact that I was still holding it all. And that's when I really found this deep understanding of money. I just wonder if now the people who come in to buy a meme or an NFT were just people buying a lottery ticket in the first place, just aren't the Right. Like would have never found their way to bitcoin anyway. Right there. It's like at least we were touching it.
- [40:08]
B
I mean, we don't know for sure, but I think it'll take a full cycle. I mean it always does take a full cycle for people to kind of learn their lesson, so to speak, and kind of figure out like the importance of holding their wealth in something that is more stable than meme coins.
- [40:28]
C
Right.
- [40:28]
B
So we'll see.
- [40:30]
A
I deeply wonder, like, as we're thinking through this, like, what percentage of people who have ever bought some sort of crypto are completely washed out at this point, like either they still own it in some dust wallet and haven't thought about it, or have lost their interest or they got angry and quit. I really bet that's a very, very high percentage when you consider how many people only bought an NFT or only bought some meme coin.
- [40:54]
B
Possibly, possibly. But I would think people who bought like NFT or meme coins actually also have some exposure to. To.
- [41:03]
A
They probably have some eth or some salana. Right. If they bought a. If they bought those things. Yeah, it's a really interesting question. So obviously you've mentioned the cycle quite a few times, so it seems that you're a stage still a believer that we are in another cycle and that it's intact. So projecting that forward, having been through four or five of these now, is for. What do you see coming in the future months? Right. If we really deeply believe in the cycle, I think we think fall will be very good.
- [41:28]
B
Yeah, I think the end of the year will be good. I mean, I've always expected us to hit in terms of Bitcoin price, 150k, but who knows, right? It could be. This could be the top today or it could. It could go to like, you've been.
- [41:41]
A
Here long enough to know that maybe.
- [41:44]
B
I for sure don't know. Yeah, nothing will surprise me like if. It won't surprise me if next month we drop back down like 80%. It also won't surprise me if it goes like up like 300% next month. So it's always going to be a wild ride, whether it's up or down.
- [42:02]
A
So roller coaster, you have a long history of being an exceptional Trader though, and reading the cycles well and actually playing them well. Are you still actively trading and in and out of coins or in and out of the market at this point? Have you become more of a kind of a long term holder? How do you kind of approach the market now?
- [42:23]
B
I've always been kind of buying and selling bitcoin. I would say, like basically that's all I trade bitcoin, but just kind of my philosophy, believe it or not, is buy low and sell high. That's kind of. I know, it's crazy.
- [42:42]
A
Mine is buy high and hopefully sell high, which I think is by the way, a totally good momentum strategy.
- [42:48]
B
The problem is most people sell high. Most people get in this space at the kind of like near the peak because that's when they hear about it and then they get wiped out when the price drops like 80%.
- [43:00]
A
So do you think we still have 80% drawdowns in our future? Like there's this notion obviously that because of institutional and government adoption that maybe there's a higher floor. Right. At least at this point. Seemingly there's a lot of people lined up and very transparently, because we know that these treasure treasury companies have raised money and haven't bought yet. And maybe governments coming in that there are people lined up to buy this on the dip. Yeah, seemingly there's still a lot of people who want to buy the dip that maybe would not have been there before. And it's interesting because I think it's a different holder that's providing the floor now. Like maybe those early whales are not interested in buying more bitcoin at this point when it dips. And those were the people who you always knew would be the buyer of last resort.
- [43:39]
B
Yeah, I don't, I don't know for sure. Obviously I think I wouldn't be surprised if we see another 80% drawdown. You, I mean, you say you think that there will be people buying a dip, but a lot of those people are actually already heavily invested. So when it drops, their capital is already tied up with, with there's no dry powder.
- [44:00]
A
Yeah. So you had to have sold to be able to buy. So. Yeah.
- [44:03]
B
So yeah, I mean, I would think over time it becomes less volatile. I mean, I would expect it.
- [44:08]
C
Right.
- [44:10]
B
It's not going to always be this volatile as, as the, as a kind of the, the market grows. So over time will be less volatile. Whether or not this cycle there will be a large dip.
- [44:23]
A
Who's to say 50 would still be a big dip and that would be really small for a Cycle.
- [44:28]
B
Yeah, right. I'll be.
- [44:29]
A
And I think it would have the same effect, especially with treasury companies. I mean, a lot of these guys are going to puke on a 25 or 30 dip at this point or even be forced to.
- [44:37]
B
Yeah, I would expect like a 50. That would be, would be only a 50. That would be nice, but who knows where. Yeah, I mean, it could, the price could go up to like, it could be from two. Exactly.
- [44:49]
C
Right.
- [44:49]
B
It could be from like, like 300 to 150. And you're like, it's a huge dip, but it's still higher than today.
- [44:55]
A
It's that mentally modeling that is always the craziest thing to me. You know, you always see the memes. It's like Bitcoin at 100 on the way up and it's like this buff guy or something. It's like Bitcoin at 100 on the way down. It's like a homeless guy on the side of the street. Right. It's the exact same price and it's within like three months. But the sentiment is entirely different around it, whether you're on the way up or on the way down.
- [45:15]
B
Yeah. I think the key is like, I would kind of advise against like leverage.
- [45:20]
C
Right.
- [45:21]
B
That's what, that's what kills you. Right. If you're, if you're doing leverage even for these treasury companies, if you're, if you're highly leveraged, a 50 drop would, would kill you. And that's not. I mean, that's.
- [45:32]
A
Yeah. And then you're, you're right. But you lose all your money before you're right. Because it goes back up. Do you think that. So there's a sentiment that the treasury companies could be the next major catalyst for a future bear market.
- [45:43]
B
They could be if they're, if they're highly leveraged.
- [45:45]
C
Right.
- [45:46]
B
If they're highly leveraged, it could be a disaster.
- [45:48]
C
Right.
- [45:48]
B
It's kind of be like the short squeeze problem.
- [45:51]
C
Right.
- [45:52]
B
There will be. They'll go bankrupt that there and there will be forced to sell, which leads to more price drop. But yeah, that, that could be the, the event that would kind of cause the bear market to happen.
- [46:06]
A
So you sort of mentioned 150 as a conservative, I guess top for, you know, this bull market. I know that that's not a very specific guess, but I think that's in line with a lot of people are thinking. That said, do you think that when we get future cycles, it still is years of bear market and then these parabolic advances, then years of bear market and parabolic advances. And even if it is that way, how high do you think this market can still go? I mean, are you in The Bitcoin hits $1 million by 2030 camp or even, you know, there's much more hyperbolic guesses than that, certainly. But we almost have this, like, bitcoin hitting a million is inevitable sentiment.
- [46:45]
B
It might be. It might be. I mean, I think I'm pretty bullish with the whole market. Whether it's a million, like in the next cycle or the one after, I think, I think we'll get there.
- [46:56]
A
Doesn't matter.
- [46:57]
B
I think the real problem is not. The real problem is that it's based off of the US dollar, which is being inflated away.
- [47:06]
C
Right.
- [47:06]
B
So bitcoin will, will of course hit a million dollars if the US dollar keeps. If the Fed keeps printing more money.
- [47:13]
C
Right.
- [47:13]
B
It's just, it's kind of inevitable because of that.
- [47:16]
C
Right.
- [47:17]
B
And is there, do I see a future where kind of the US dollar can. Where they stop printing the money? No.
- [47:26]
C
Right.
- [47:26]
B
I just don't. That feature is not possible.
- [47:29]
C
Right.
- [47:29]
B
Because with the amount of money we owe, we just have to keep printing more money. And the amount of money we spend, it's just kind of inevitable. So bitcoin will inevitably reach a million dollars just because that. Not with anything bitcoin is doing itself.
- [47:43]
A
I wonder how much it's going to cost to buy a house or a car.
- [47:48]
B
Yeah.
- [47:48]
A
At that point. Because they should have the same kind of parabolic growth in prices as bitcoin has. If it's not unique to bitcoin, it's just because of the inflation of the denominator. It's really crazy, though. We've seen it accelerate just as bitcoiners have predicted since bitcoin was created. And so no reason to really change the thesis, I think, at this point. So I know we're kind of running out of time here. Let's say it's 2031, 2041. You're looking back on 20, 30 years of Litecoin. A, where do you think litecoin will be at that point? And B, how would you want people to view litecoin as a part of the history of money?
- [48:32]
B
I'd love to see litecoin. I mean, I expect litecoin to, to still be around then.
- [48:37]
C
Right.
- [48:37]
B
I think litecoin has the longevity. It's something that is. It's very decentralized. It's kind of out of my control. Like I can't, I can't kill it. I don't think it would. Yeah, so it'll be around. I hope to see it kind of still be used by people more and more people, obviously, and be kind of used alongside Bitcoin as. As money. I think the most important thing is that it's. It's a good store of value against the US dollar. And also it's easy and fast and cheap way to. To transact, to spend your money.
- [49:19]
A
So it really sounds like you don't think litecoin needs many more bells and whistles to serve the function that it was intended and to serve a function moving forward.
- [49:29]
B
Yeah, I think having fungibility is very important, so that's something that we're working on. But yeah, I mean, it kind of just works and people use. Use litecoin for everyday purchases. And the best part about that is people use litecoin and those people that may not even know who I am.
- [49:46]
C
Right.
- [49:46]
B
It's not. It doesn't matter who created litecoin. It doesn't matter when it was created, why it was created. All that matters is that it's useful for two people as. As money. I think that's the kind of the most important thing.
- [49:58]
A
Love it, man. Well, I know we ran up against time. I feel like we could do this for hours, but I really appreciate that you took this hour with me to talk about it. We need to make sure that it's not as long of a break next time.
- [50:09]
B
Yeah, for sure.
- [50:10]
A
I'll call you at 150 and we'll see if we think it's going to go to 200 or if we're selling.
- [50:16]
B
Sounds good.
- [50:18]
A
Thank you so much, Charlie. Always a pleasure.
- [50:20]
B
Nice talking to you, Scott. That's dope.