Litecoin (LTC), known as the “silver to bitcoin gold,” has been around for 11 years — which is quite a feat considering that a fair amount of cryptocurrencies have crashed in the 12 months since its launch. Cointelegraph spoke with Allen Austin, Managing Director of the Litecoin Foundation, about why Litecoin’s main utility is serving as a secure payment method.
According to Austin, much of his vision for Litecoin was drawn from personal experience:
“When I finished graduate school, I worked with start-up technology companies and real estate. And one of the things I did was manage accounts for companies like Bank of America and Fannie Mae, and it was amazing to see how old their technology was and how difficult it was to do things.
After the 2008 financial crisis, Austin began to lose faith in the traditional financial system. “Seeing how the big banks are setting different standards for everyone when they want to get money, and how they’re bailing out now, made me really appreciate what blockchain technology is trying to do,” he told Cointelegraph. .
Austin explained that Litecoin was created with many features and characteristics similar to Bitcoin (BTC). “It is decentralized for startups, and there were no pre-mined tokens issued to founders, making it a fair startup. It also has limited supply, is very liquid and has very low fees. Moreover, the blockchain has been continuously online for 11 years. According to Austin, the Litecoin development team will focus on three main efforts: onboarding business partnerships, merchants and introducing a debit card for Litecoin.
“When you use a stablecoin to pay for things, you’re essentially using a digital copy of fiat money. Cryptocurrencies are volatile, but no broker is taking high commissions or scrutinizing your transactions.
After launching Litecoin’s new privacy layer, Austin says the coin has become more user-friendly for people who want to protect their data. “It provides fungibility,” he said. “When you go to pay with a credit card or hard cash, the merchant doesn’t know how much money you have in your pocket or your bank account. But, say, if you pay in Bitcoin, everyone can see that transaction and their wallet balance on the blockchain. Austin explains that the new privacy layer on top of Litecoin will solve the problem. “We’re allowing users to hide their address and balance when making payments. And it’s really useful to protect people’s privacy, for example when they receive their salary in crypto.”
Finally, for Austin, the idea of Litecoin is to evolve as a new payment method and not to capitalize on the latest trends in the industry. “Now our goal is to build it slowly. We’ve been here for years, and we’ve seen that if you go too fast, the project can collapse on itself. So, we’re sticking to our goal of developing Litecoin as the best payment.”