• Litecoin founder Charlie Lee has announced that he will match all donations to the Litecoin Foundation up to a maximum of $250,000 annually during the recent Litecoin Summit in Nashville.
• Litecoin has continued to record growth, including leading in the number of non-empty wallets at eight million, but its price has failed to catch up.

Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin, has announced a new initiative under which he will match any donation made to the Litecoin Foundation as he seeks to reignite the growth of the Litecoin ecosystem.

Lee made the announcement at the Litecoin Summit last week. The event covered all things Litecoin, with Lee headlining it alongside Jameson Lopp, Peter McCormack, Satoshi Action Fund’s Dennis Porter and more. The summit took place alongside the famed BTC Conference in Nashville, where Donald Trump pledged to champion the industry’s interest, as we reported.

BREAKING: A big announcement from @Satoshilite at #LitecoinSummit2024 in Nashville! Charlie Lee to match donations to the Foundation and development for the next FIVE YEARS!! #LTCdev #Litecoin ⚡️ $LTC
Read the full announcement here https://t.co/XaNsviPIIX pic.twitter.com/UzTxvxfEaI

— Litecoin Foundation ⚡️ (@LTCFoundation) July 29, 2024

In an accompanying blog post, the Foundation revealed that Lee had committed to matching donations for the next five years.

Of the $250,000 maximum, $50,000 would be committed to Lite Space, a recently launched development platform and bounty program. While still relatively new, Lite Space has the support of notable open-source projects, including Litewallet, Ordinals Lite, MWEB, Electrum-LTC and Litescribe Wallet.

The Foundation’s General Fund is also part of the ecosystem and has pledged to support projects that meet its criteria, which include embracing open-source ethos and having a plan that shows how it promotes the growth of the Litecoin ecosystem.

The rest of the funds—$200,000—will go to direct donations to the Foundation. In his presentation at the summit, Lee said that the decision is meant to promote the growth of the Litecoin space.

The former Google and Coinbase engineer reminded attendees that, unlike most newer crypto projects, Litecoin wasn’t pre-mined, and the development team didn’t take a big chunk of LTC for themselves. While this makes the project more democratic, it means the Foundation lacks the resources to support as many projects as it would want.

He stated:

Because Litecoin was launched fairly, as you all know, we didn’t print money for ourselves. So because of that the Litecoin Foundation is very lean. Most projects that come to us we have to turn down because we don’t have the funding. I want to change that.

The Foundation also reminded interested donors that it received the 501(c)(3) status in the US, allowing American donors to donate to its US entity and write it off as a tax-deductible contribution. It also revealed that it’s open to receiving donations in crypto or fiat, that all the funds will be accounted for, and that the distribution will be made public.

Meanwhile, despite this and other positive developments, many of which we have reported in recent months, LTC has failed to catch up on the price charts. The token changes hands at $72, shedding 3.4% in the past day for a $5.39 billion market cap.