During a livestreamed podcast this week, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee emphasised that financial privacy in money is a human right regardless of whether people realise it today.
Asked about whether government would crackdown on Litecoin in response to its imminent MimbleWimble Extension (MWEB) launch, Lee outlined that key exchanges in the industry do not anticipate issues.
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Speaking on the Doug Polk Podcast, Lee elaborated on why the market chooses certain cryptocurrencies over others in order to transact, stating that the main reason is ‘good money’.
Drawing on foundational principles of Bitcoin and Litecoin, Lee argued that “the reason why people use Monero for privacy and fungibility reasons is because it’s actually a better form of money. You want money where you have financial privacy – this is a human right which people have. Monero is a better form of money that’s why people use it.”
He went on to say that people don’t necessarily use it (Monero) to evade government spying but because people want financial privacy. At the same time, Lee recognised that governments use the monetary infrastructure to track criminal behaviour, and if they could they would use everything at their disposal in the pursuit of this goal.
He said:
It’s true that in this society we live in, governments are using the monetary rails to track criminals, because this is probably the easiest way they can do it. If governments can they would spy on your phone calls and spy on your emails. Similarly they are doing that with money because they can. People are not pushing back that strongly against it, whereas people are pushing back against phone-taps and email taps.
I would like to see a world where people care about financial privacy more and are pushing back against government tapping or spying on their financial transactions because they’re giving away their rights without even realising it.
Pivoting slightly, the Litecoin founder noted that leading industry exchanges whom he is in touch with are optimistic about the upgrade.
I’ve talked to quite a few exchanges about this and they seem pretty optimistic that this MWEB upgrade will not lead to more regulation, and given that Litecoin is supported on pretty much every exchange out there today I think it will continue to be supported. There might be a few that crackdown but I don’t see it becoming a big issue.
Lee echoed similar sentiment on Government-mandates in general during the free-floating conversation, noting that “governments telling people what they have to or can’t put in their body is not something I support. Government should not mandate things like that and it’s up to yourself as to whether or not you want to do it.”
Lee’s comments come soon after data published by behavioural analytics platform Santiment revealed that investors have heavily accumulated litecoin over the last four months, marking the longest buying period since 2017.
Litecoin witnessed a modest overnight recovery this week as on-chain tailwinds turn the asset into a more attractive cryptocurrency investment.
Litecoin exchanges hands at $107 at the time of publishing.
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