I'm sure most of you have already heard that there's a planned "Litecoin fork" slated to occur sometime on February 19th, where a new cryptocurrency "Litecoin Cash" will come into existence. That may sound like a windfall for those who will be holding Litecoin when the fork occurs, but this is not the same as the Bitcoin/Bitcoin Cash fork...
The Bitcoin Cash fork was due to competing ideologies among the Bitcoin dev team, when a consensus could not be reached as to the future of Bitcoin. Therefore some of Bitcoin's core developers got together and agreed to move ahead with the Bitcoin Cash fork. This Litecoin Cash fork though HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH LITECOIN OR THE LITECOIN DEV TEAM! It seems to be nothing more than a new cryptocurrency that hopes to capitalize on the popularity of Litecoin, as opposed to a true fork from Litecoin. Yes, they would both share the Litecoin transaction blocks up until the fork occurs, but don't get your hopes up for Litecoin Cash to take off like Bitcoin Cash did, and be very wary of this "fork".
Litecoin founder Charlie Lee had this to say about the "Litecoin Cash Fork"...
Litecoin Cash's founders insist that isn't the case with this is not an attempt to ride the success of Litecoin by creating a new cryptocurrency. Michael "Scarlet" Wyszynski, the Head of Design at Litecoin Cash had this to say when he was interviewed by Business Insider regarding the upcoming fork...
"As to the name, it’s strictly a product of convention. No confusion is intended, but it has simply become customary for a new coin arising from a fork to use the forked coin’s name as a prefix to its own. And while we're not affiliated with Litecoin or the Litecoin dev team in any way, we will share the first 1,371,111 blocks of transactions in the ledger. People are absolutely right to be cautious and skeptical."
As usual, there are two opposing sides to the Litecoin/Litecoin Cash fork debate, each with their own viewpoints. When it comes down to it though, this just seems like a cash grab to me and many others. At least Bitcoin Cash had a fair amount of support from the crypto community when it forked from Bitcoin, giving the exchanges an impetus to add it to their exchanges and support trading. That seems unlikely for this Litecoin clone, at least to me.
What do you guys think about the Litecoin Cash Fork? Do you think it's a legitimate attempt to improve upon Litecoin? Do you think that this fork will succeed, and that Litecoin Cash will become a viable cryptocurrency that's widely supported like Litecoin?
Thanks for reading, and let's discuss!