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Charlie Lee (computer scientist)
American computer scientist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Charlie Lee is a computer scientist, best known as the creator of Litecoin. He serves as the managing director of the Litecoin Foundation.[1][2]
Early life
Lee was born in Ivory Coast, moved to the United States at the age of 13, and graduated from high school in 1995.[3] He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science in 2000.[3]
Lee's brother, Bobby C. Lee, is the founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BTC China.[4]
Career
For a decade in the 2000s, Lee worked for Google. His work for the company included writing code for ChromeOS.[5] In 2011, Lee became interested in Bitcoin.[6] In October 2011, he released Litecoin on Bitcointalk.[7] He had written the blockchain technology based on Bitcoin in his spare time while employed at Google. He released Litecoin to the public after mining only 150 coins.[5] Lee has stated that he did not intend to compete with Bitcoin but meant Litecoin to be used for smaller transactions.[6]
In July 2013, Lee left Google and began working at Coinbase, before the cryptocurrency exchange adopted the coin he had created.[8] Lee held the position of Engineering Director until 2017.[9]
In December 2017, Lee announced on Reddit that he sold almost all of his Litecoin holdings due to a perceived conflict of interest.[10] He had been criticized for his tweets, which had a possible effect on the price of the coin.[11] Lee sold or donated all of his coins except for a few minted in physical form, which he kept as collectibles.[12][13]
Lee is currently working full-time with the Litecoin Foundation on fostering Litecoin adoption.[14]
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References
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