As we are approaching the 10th anniversary of Litecoin, I figured it's a good time to do a long Twitter 🧵 on the history of Litecoin from my perspective.

My memory of events can be hazy at times, so for those mentioned, feel free to add or correct anything I say. Here goes... The first altcoin to Bitcoin is actually Namecoin. It used the same mining algorithm as Bitcoin, sha256d. After Namecoin came about a dozen other altcoins: Ixcoin, Iocoin, Solidcoin, Tenebrix, etc. This was all before Litecoin was launched. Every one of these coins are now dead.

An NFT is a digital certificate to a collectable that can be easily, cheaply, and perfectly duplicated.

🧵👇 2/ Imagine if we have technology that can perfectly clone a piece of artwork to the last detail where it’s indistinguishable to the original even by experts.

The problem with NFTs is that they are Non-Finite Tokens. There is zero cost to create unlimited number of tokens.

Sure, Justin Roiland's NFT is unique and awesome. But what's stopping Matt Groening or Mike Judge or thousands of other artists from creating millions of new NFTs?

https://twitter.com/decryptmedia/status/1349672319392882691

Unlike NFTs, real world art is not zero cost. It takes effort and time to create a piece. This is effectively Proof of Work. A famous artist like Picasso can only create thousands of pieces of art in his lifetime. This limitation creates scarcity, which helps keep the value high.

Since so many people have asked me if this is an issue, I figure I should respond to this and clear up any misunderstanding of how merged mining works and how it affects 51% attack.

Let me start off by saying that this network security concern is totally unfounded.

Thread... 👇 2/ First, let me explain how security works in a POW cryptocurrency. Miners have an upfront cost (cost of hardware like ASICs/GPUs) and an incremental cost (cost of electricity) when mining a coin. To make money, miners have to mine enough coins to cover both costs over time.

1/ Just want to set the record straight.

In the 8 years history of Litecoin, we've only had a handful of core developers working on Litecoin Core.

At various points in time, it's been me, @wtogami, @thrasher_au, @shaolinfry, @TheRealXinxi, and @loshan1212. 2/ It's no secret that we have purposefully kept Litecoin's code very close to Bitcoin's code. Since we are mostly just merging in Bitcoin changes, we only need a lead Litecoin Core developer doing the merges and the rest of us help with code reviews, testing, and gitian builds.

1/ In the early days of Litecoin (2011), there were threats of 51% attacks. To keep Litecoin secure, I utilized checkpoints. Checkpointing is a centralizing feature as it relies on the developers deciding which is the right chain. But for the beginning of a coin, it made sense. 2/ It's trading off some centralization for network stability and reliability. Satoshi also used checkpoints in Bitcoin in the beginning. Though one can say that it is similar to the idea of UASF as users can decide whether or not to run or upgrade to the latest checkpoints.

1/ On-chain Bitcoin and Litecoin payments are not peer-to-peer. Payments are sent from sender to miners, who record it on a distributed ledger. The recipient receives the payment when it's recorded. BUT, this is facilitated by a p2p network where transactions are broadcasted. 2/ The broadcast network IS p2p, but strictly speaking payments are not p2p. The sender can ignore the p2p network and directly communicate the transaction to miners to send payments. The sender doesn't have to have any communication with the recipient in any p2p manner at all!

1/ Recently, there has been a concerted effort to suppress Litecoin price by people/funds that are shorting LTC and by groups that see Litecoin as a threat. I will clear up this FUD and show why Litecoin has tremendous value. 2/ FUD: Litecoin has lost its edge and can't differentiate itself from hundreds of other altcoins.

TRUTH: Litecoin has one of the most secure networks of all altcoins. Litecoin has over $150MM of ASIC hardware protecting it. Litecoin dominates Scrypt mining by far.

1/ At the LTC Summit, I briefly addressed the motivation behind selling my LTC holdings. However, bad journalism is rampant in crypto, and now there's a sensational headline created out of a partial quote from me. 2/ I said half-jokingly that it's good that I did what I did or else I might need to find another job and can't work full-time on Litecoin (not to mention help fund the Litecoin Foundation). Of course, that's the only point this journalist picked up on and took no time to bash me

The BCH pump in the past few days is super impressive. I should have kept my BCH!😂

I still don't think BCH can compete with BTC long term, but markets can stay irrational for a long time. I'm glad there's a blockchain for big blockers though. Hopefully, resulting in less drama. To be honest, BCH can compete well against LTC to be Bitcoin's silver. But their arrogance wouldn't let settle for second. Their current strategy is winner take all against Bitcoin, and they will lose because of these reasons:

Perpetual onchain scaling destroys decentralization