Mike Novogratz Agrees That Litecoin Is Direct Attack on Bitcoin
Cryptocurrency analyst and former trader Qiao Wang has unleashed scathing critiques of Litecoin (LTC), slamming the O.G. altcoin as a "direct attack" on Bitcoin in a recent tweet:
To newcomers: LTC is a direct attack on BTC. LTC is not faster than BTC. It's not silver to BTC's gold. It's not BTC's testnet. BTC's testnet is BTC's testnet.
This earned him praise from none other than former hedge fund manager and Galaxy Digital CEO Michael Novogratz who called Wang a "smart man" based on his take.
Debunking the "digital silver" narrative
Often advertised as "the silver to Bitcoin's gold," Litecoin has a much tinier market cap compared to the leading cryptocurrency.
Wang, however, is convinced that any comparisons between the two are absurd, and the "garbage" altcoin is only suitable as a tool of speculation:
I'm all for making money. But there's nothing to be proud of.
Litecoin is dismissed by skeptics as a copycat version of Bitcoin since it was created by tweaking the source code of the original cryptocurrency to make it more efficient.
While sharing the same consensus mechanism and maximum supply cap, Litecoin has a different mining algorithm, called Scrypt. It also produces new blocks four times faster than Bitcoin (2.5 minutes and 10 minutes, respectively).
LTC is currently the fifth biggest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $5.6 billion after flipping Bitcoin Cash last month.
The crypto is down 77 percent since reaching its all-time high of roughly $366 in December 2017—when its creator, Google's former software engineer, Charlie Lee, famously dumped all of his holdings.
Alex DovbnyaTalking your own book
This is not the first time that Wang took a shot at Litecoin. In late November, he grimly admitted that Litecoin, along with Ripple-affiliated XRP, would be discovered by the retail sphere before DeFi tokens such as Aave (AAVE) and Synthetix (SNX) because of an abundance of on-ramps and their high placement in crypto rankings.
Given that Wang is currently at the helm of decentralized finance accelerator DeFi Alliance, he has a vested interest in actively discouraging uninitiated newcomers from choosing LTC over flashy decentralized finance things.
Novogratz, an on-again, off-again billionaire, also has DeFi projects in his portfolio, which probably explains his aversion to team blue.
Litecoin, one of the oldest altcoins, recently celebrated its ninth anniversary with zero downtime on record, a fact that is constantly celebrated by Lee. Will DeFi tokens have the same staying power?
Arman Shirinyan
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
