- Litecoin creator Charlie Lee sold his entire litecoin holding in December.
- He said in an interview on Friday that "it feels like it's not the right decision" after the recent fall in litecoin's value.
- But he says he thinks it's the right decision long-term as he tried to make litecoin a truly decentralised cryptocurrency.
- You can follow the live litecoin price on Markets Insider.
LONDON - The founder of cryptocurrency litecoin has hinted that he has some regrets about selling his entire holding shortly before Christmas.
Developer Charlie Lee, a former Google and Coinbase employee, created litecoin in 2011 as a quicker and cheaper alternative to bitcoin. Litecoin has a market cap of $8 billion and is the sixth largest cryptocurrency, according to CoinMarketCap.com.
Lee sold his entire litecoin holding on December 20, saying in a Reddit post the move was meant to remove any perception of "conflict of interest." Lee remains the chairman of the Litecoin Foundation, which promotes the cryptocurrency and its adoption.
In an interview streamed over YouTube on Friday, Lee hinted at some regrets about his decision to sell.
"I still think it was the right move but I question whether - I think in the long run it was the right move but in the short term while the price is down, below the all-time high, it just feels like it's not the right decision," Lee said.
Litecoin has fallen from a price of around $322 per coin on the day Lee sold to $150 on Friday morning. The decline is in-line with the wider cryptocurrency market, which has broadly halved in size since a peak in December.
Despite the price crash, Lee said: "But I think like, moving forward, five years down the road, when the price is back to the all-time high, I feel like it will be the right move."
Lee also stressed that his litecoin holdings were not large enough to move the market when he sold.
"I didn't actually have that many litecoins," Lee said. "My selling litecoins didn't actually affect the market itself but the fact that I had litecoins and people were thinking that I might dump it on the market actually was an issue. Similarly, Satoshi [Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin], people think he has 1 million bitcoin and if he decides to sell it could really crash the market."
Lee has created and still controls litecoin but he said his selling his holdings "was definitely the first step" to stopping involvement and making litecoin a truly decentralized cryptocurrency.
"As for the future, I think eventually I would have to step away," he said. "For a currency to really be a worldwide, decentralized currency, you can't have a leader trying to control things. To make it more decentralized eventually I'll step away."
You can watch the full interview on YouTube.
