Litecoin Foundation’s managing director shares his thoughts on decentralized money

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Litecoin (LTC), often known as “the silver to Bitcoin’s gold,” has been round for nearly 11 years — which is kind of a feat contemplating a good quantity of cryptocurrencies go bust inside 12 months of launching. Cointelegraph spoke with the Litecoin Basis’s managing director, Alan Austin, about why he thinks Litecoin’s core utility is serving as a dependable technique of cost.

As informed by Austin, a lot of his imaginative and prescient for Litecoin is drawn from private expertise:

“Once I completed grad faculty, I labored with startup expertise corporations and actual property. And one of many issues I did was managing accounts for corporations like Financial institution of America and Fannie Mae, and it was shocking to see how previous their expertise was and the way troublesome it was to get stuff carried out.”

After the 2008 monetary disaster, Austin started dropping religion within the conventional monetary system. “Seeing how the large banks set totally different requirements for everybody at their discretion in terms of entry to cash, and the way now they have been those getting bailed out, it made me actually admire what blockchain expertise was making an attempt to do,” he informed Cointelegraph.

Austin defined that Litecoin was created with many options and attributes much like Bitcoin (BTC). “For starters, it’s decentralized, and there have been no pre-mine tokens given to founders, making it a good launch. It additionally has a restricted provide, is extremely liquid and has very low charges. Furthermore, the blockchain has been on-line for 11 years with out downtime.” In response to Austin, the Litecoin growth workforce primarily focuses on three efforts: onboarding enterprise partnerships, retailers and outreach for the Litecoin Card debit card.

“Once you use stablecoins to pay for items, in actuality, all you’re doing is utilizing a digital model of fiat cash. Cryptocurrencies are risky, however no middlemen are taking a hefty fee or scrutinizing your transactions.”

With the launch of Litecoin’s new privacy layer, Austin stated that the coin has grow to be extra user-friendly for these eager on defending their knowledge. “It gives fungibility,” he stated. “Once you go to pay with a bank card or laborious money, the service provider doesn’t know the way a lot money you’ve obtained in your pocket, nor your checking account. However, say, when you pay with Bitcoin, everybody can see that transaction and your pockets stability on the blockchain.” Austin explains that the brand new privateness layer on prime of Litecoin solves the issue. “We’re permitting customers to cover their deal with and stability quantity when making funds. And it’s actually helpful for shielding folks’s privateness, such when receiving their payroll in crypto.”

Lastly, for Austin, the concept of Litecoin lies in its evolution as a brand new technique of cost and never a lot in capitalizing on the most recent tendencies within the trade. “Our aim proper now could be to form of construct sluggish. We’ve been right here for years, and we’ve seen that when you transfer too quick, the venture can implode on itself. So, we’re sticking to our aim of creating Litecoin as a greater cost.”