Charlie Lee | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Ivory Coast |
| Education | BS and MS, computer science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000 |
| Website | Charlie Lee on Twitter |
Charlie Lee is a computer scientist, best known as the creator of Litecoin. He serves as the managing director of the Litecoin Foundation. [1] [2]
Lee was born in Ivory Coast, moved to the United States at the age of 13, and graduated from high school in 1995. [3] He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science in 2000. [3]
Lee's brother, Bobby C. Lee, is the founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BTC China. [4]
For a decade in the 2000s, Lee worked for Google. His work for the company included writing code for ChromeOS. [5] In 2011, Lee became interested in Bitcoin. [6] In October 2011, he released Litecoin on Bitcointalk. [7] He had written the blockchain technology based on the Bitcoin in his spare time while employed at Google. He released Litecoin to the public after mining only 150 coins. [5] Lee has stated that he did not intend to compete with Bitcoin but meant Litecoin to be used for smaller transactions. [6]
In July 2013, Lee left Google and began working at Coinbase, before the cryptocurrency exchange adopted the coin he had created. [8] Lee held the position of Engineering Director until 2017. [9]
In December 2017, Lee announced on Reddit that he sold almost all of his Litecoin holdings due to a perceived conflict of interest. [10] He had been criticized for his tweets, which had a possible effect on the price of the coin. [11] Lee sold or donated all of his coins except for a few minted in physical form, which he kept as collectibles. [12] [13]
Lee is currently working full-time with the Litecoin Foundation on fostering Litecoin adoption. [14]
Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography and record them in a public distributed ledger, called a blockchain, without central oversight. Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain. Mining consumes large quantities of electricity and has been criticized for its environmental impact.
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It has, in a financial point of view, grown to be its own asset class. However, on the contrary to other asset classes like equities or commodities, sectors have not been officially defined as of yet though abstract version of them exist.
Litecoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and open-source software project released under the MIT/X11 license. Inspired by Bitcoin, Litecoin was among the earliest altcoins, starting in October 2011. In technical details, the Litecoin main chain shares a slightly modified Bitcoin codebase. The practical effects of those codebase differences are lower transaction fees, faster transaction confirmations, and faster mining difficulty retargeting. Due to its underlying similarities to Bitcoin, Litecoin has historically been referred to as the "silver to Bitcoin's gold." In 2022, Litecoin added optional privacy features via soft fork through the MWEB upgrade.
The Bitcoin Foundation is an American organization that was formerly a nonprofit corporation. It was founded in September 2012 in an effort to restore the reputation of Bitcoin after several scandals, and to try to promote its development and uptake. The organization is modeled on the Linux Foundation and was funded mainly through grants made by for-profit companies that depend on the bitcoin technology.
Mt. Gox was a Bitcoin exchange based in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Launched in 2006 as a tradable card game service, Mt. Gox transitioned into a Bitcoin exchange by 2010 and handled over 70% of all Bitcoin transactions globally by early 2014.
Zerocoin is a privacy protocol proposed in 2013 by Johns Hopkins University professor Matthew D. Green and his graduate students, Ian Miers and Christina Garman. It was designed as an extension to the Bitcoin protocol that would improve Bitcoin transactions' anonymity by having coin-mixing capabilities natively built into the protocol. Zerocoin is not currently compatible with Bitcoin.
Charles Shrem IV is an American entrepreneur and bitcoin advocate. He co-founded the now-defunct startup company BitInstant, and is a founding member of the Bitcoin Foundation. In 2014 he was sentenced to two years in prison for aiding and abetting the operation of an unlicensed money-transmitting business related to the Silk Road marketplace. He was released from prison in 2016. In 2017, he joined Jaxx and served as its chief operating officer, and founded cryptocurrency advisory CryptoIQ.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a digital asset that uses cryptography to control its creation and management rather than relying on central authorities. Originally designed as a medium of exchange, Bitcoin is now primarily regarded as a store of value. The history of bitcoin started with its invention and implementation by Satoshi Nakamoto, who integrated many existing ideas from the cryptography community. Over the course of bitcoin's history, it has undergone rapid growth to become a significant store of value both on- and offline. From the mid-2010s, some businesses began accepting bitcoin in addition to traditional currencies.
BTCC is a cryptocurrency exchange established in June 2011. Originally known as BTC China, the exchange underwent significant restructuring after it was acquired by a Hong Kong-based blockchain investment fund in 2018, ceasing operations in China and expanding internationally.
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a joke, making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time. It is considered both the first "meme coin", and more specifically the first "dog coin". Despite its satirical nature, some consider it a legitimate investment prospect. Dogecoin features the face of Kabosu from the "doge" meme as its logo and namesake. It was introduced on December 6, 2013, and quickly developed its own online community, reaching a peak market capitalization of over US$85 billion on May 5, 2021. As of 2021, it is the sleeve sponsor of Watford Football Club.
Vitaly Dmitrievich Buterin, better known as Vitalik Buterin, is a Canadian computer programmer and co-founder of Ethereum. Buterin became involved with cryptocurrency early in its inception, co-founding Bitcoin Magazine in 2011 and Dark Wallet in 2013 together with Amir Taaki and Cody Wilson In 2015, Buterin deployed the Ethereum blockchain with Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin.
Mark Marie Robert Karpelès, also sometimes known by his online alias MagicalTux, is the former CEO of bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. Born in France, he moved to Japan in 2009. Under his leadership, Mt. Gox was the world's largest bitcoin exchange, handling over 70% of all bitcoin transactions at its peak in 2014. In September 2024, Karpeles announced the upcoming launch of EllipX, a new cryptocurrency exchange focused on transparency and compliance with Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), where he serves as Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
Roger Keith Ver is an early investor in Bitcoin, Bitcoin-related startups and an early promoter of Bitcoin, and sometimes known as Bitcoin Jesus. He now primarily promotes Bitcoin Cash as Ver sees it as fulfilling the intended and original purpose of the "Bitcoin White Paper", first published in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, in which Nakamoto referred to Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
HTX is a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange. Founded in China as Huobi, the company now has offices in Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and the United States. In August 2018 it became a publicly listed Hong Kong company.
BTC-e was a cryptocurrency trading platform primarily serving the Russian market, with servers located in the United States. The U.S. government seized their website and funds in 2017. It was founded in July 2011 by Alexander Vinnik and Aleksandr Bilyuchenko, and as of February 2015 handled around 3% of all Bitcoin exchange volume. The platform was eventually taken over by Russian Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, and funds from BTC-e were used for the war in Donbass, under the control of the FSB.
Jed McCaleb is an American programmer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is the founder and CEO of aerospace startup Vast and a co-founder and the CTO of Stellar. Prior to co-founding Stellar, McCaleb founded and served as the CTO of the company Ripple until 2013. McCaleb is also known for creating the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange, and the peer-to-peer eDonkey and Overnet networks as well as the eDonkey2000 application.
An initial coin offering (ICO) or initial currency offering is a type of funding using cryptocurrencies. It is often a form of crowdfunding, although a private ICO which does not seek public investment is also possible. In an ICO, a quantity of cryptocurrency is sold in the form of "tokens" ("coins") to speculators or investors, in exchange for legal tender or other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ether. The tokens are promoted as future functional units of currency if or when the ICO's funding goal is met and the project successfully launches.
The Bitcoin scalability problem refers to the limited capability of the Bitcoin network to handle large amounts of transaction data on its platform in a short span of time. It is related to the fact that records in the Bitcoin blockchain are limited in size and frequency.
Bitcoin Cash is a cryptocurrency that continues a chain of blocks from the first Bitcoin block in 2009. Notably, a split occurred in the chain between Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) on 1 August 2017. Bitcoin Cash is often considered an altcoin.