LitePay, a much-hyped payment service allowing vendors to accept and instantly convert Litecoin payments into fiat currencies, has ceased all operations.
Too Good to Be True
The Litecoin Foundation announced yesterday that LitePay CEO Kenneth Asare has shut down all operations related to the project and is actively preparing to sell the company.
According to a post on its official website, the Litecoin Foundation had previously questioned Asare’s “less than transparent nature with the company” and mirrored the community’s lack of confidence following his recent Reddit AMA. In turn, Asare asked the Litecoin Foundation for more funding — which was denied. Writes the Foundation:
The foundation refused any further funding as he was unable to provide a satisfactory picture of where the money had been spent and refused to go into exact details about the company and show objective evidence to back up his statements.
The Litecoin Foundation has also apologized for its part in hyping up what currently looks like an epic fail, stating:
We are greatly disheartened that this saga has ended in this way and we apologize for not doing enough due diligence that could have uncovered some of these issues earlier. We are currently working hard to tighten our due diligence practices and ensure that this does not happen again.
Litecoin creator Charlie Lee also took to Twitter to issue an apology to the Litecoin community.
Like everyone else, we got too excited about something that was too good to be true and we optimistically overlooked many of the warning signs. I am sorry for having hyped up this company and vow to do better due diligence in the future. https://t.co/khIjeHnyZ1
— Charlie Lee Ⓜ️🕸️ (@SatoshiLite) March 26, 2018
Litecoin Will Survive
At press time, the price of Litecoin (LTC) has been relatively unaffected by the news.
Litecoin is down roughly 11 percent over the last 24 hours, which falls in line with many market leaders. Ethereum is currently down 10 percent over the same time span, while EOS, Stellar, Cardano, and NEO are also down roughly 11 percent. Bitcoin, however, is down only 6 percent.
“Litecoin was doing perfectly fine before the promise of LitePay and will continue to do so,” states the Litecoin Foundation. It also notes:
The ecosystem is far bigger than one company and is continually growing with support from many others with market ready products joining the space and fulfilling their promises to make it easier for the world to use Litecoin.
In the end, this is a valuable lesson for us to have learned. Litecoin and our community is as strong as it has ever been and we look forward to many great things to come. Thank you for your continuous support!
Are you disappointed to learn that LitePay has ceased all operations? Do you place any blame on Charlie Lee and the Litecoin Foundation for overhyping a failed project? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of AdobeStock, Twitter/@SatoshiLite, and Shutterstock.