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

Litecoin (LTC), often known as “the silver to Bitcoin’s gold,” has been round for nearly 11 years — which is sort 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:

“After I completed grad college, I labored with startup know-how 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managing accounts for corporations like Financial institution of America and Fannie Mae, and it was stunning to see how outdated their know-how was and the way tough it was to get stuff completed.”

After the 2008 monetary disaster, Austin started dropping religion within the conventional monetary system. “Seeing how the massive banks set totally different requirements for everybody at their discretion in relation to entry to cash, and the way now they had been those getting bailed out, it made me actually respect what blockchain know-how 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 very liquid and has very low charges. Furthermore, the blockchain has been on-line for 11 years with out downtime.” In accordance with Austin, the Litecoin improvement crew primarily focuses on three efforts: onboarding enterprise partnerships, retailers and outreach for the Litecoin Card debit card.

“If you use stablecoins to pay for items, in actuality, all you’re doing is utilizing a digital model of fiat cash. Cryptocurrencies are unstable, 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 turn into extra user-friendly for these eager on defending their information. “It gives fungibility,” he stated. “If you go to pay with a bank card or onerous money, the service provider doesn’t know the way a lot money you’ve received in your pocket, nor your checking account. However, say, when you pay with Bitcoin, everybody can see that transaction and your pockets steadiness 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 handle and steadiness quantity when making funds. And it’s actually helpful for safeguarding 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 traits within the business. “Our purpose proper now’s to form of construct sluggish. We’ve been right here for years, and we’ve seen that when you transfer too quick, the undertaking can implode on itself. So, we’re sticking to our purpose of creating Litecoin as a greater cost.”