It’s common for longtime cryptocurrency investors to advise newcomers to invest heavily in bitcoin and — depending on their proclivity toward “Bitcoin maximalism — ethereum before investing in what many of them not-so-affectionately refer to as s–tcoins. What’s less common, though, is for an altcoin creator himself to give that same advice.
Yet that’s exactly what Litecoin creator Charlie Lee did on Monday when he counseled his Twitter followers to obtain at least 1 BTC before buying any other cryptocurrency, LTC included.
“There will be at most 21 million bitcoins in existence. There isn’t even enough BTC to go around for EVERY millionaire to own one. So before you buy any other coin (LTC included), try to own at least 1 BTC first,” he said. “Once you have 1 BTC, buy all the s–tcoins you want!
Litecoin, which Lee created in 2011 as a fork of Bitcoin, has always marketed itself as a payments network, the so-called “silver to bitcoin’s gold,” rather than a direct competitor to the flagship cryptocurrency.
Some Bitcoin maximalists have even acknowledged the value of Litecoin as a testbed for Bitcoin development, perhaps best evidenced by the former’s adoption of scaling solution Segregated Witness (SegWit) well in advance of its activation on the Bitcoin network.
Lee, as CCN reported, revealed in December that he had sold his entire LTC stake, a move he made shortly before the cryptocurrency market entered what has now become a seven-month freefall.