X

Litecoin's creator wants to buy porn with his own cryptocurrency

Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, is happy Pornhub is letting us buy porn with a cryptocurrency but wants the deal to include more than just one.

Mark Serrels Editorial Director
Mark Serrels is an award-winning Senior Editorial Director focused on all things culture. He covers TV, movies, anime, video games and whatever weird things are happening on the internet. He especially likes to write about the hardships of being a parent in the age of memes, Minecraft and Fortnite. Definitely don't follow him on Twitter.
See full bio
Mark Serrels
2 min read
pornhub
Pornhub

The cryptocurrency world has been buzzing Tuesday about the partnership between Verge and Pornhub.

You probably low-key know that Pornhub is, for better or worse, one of the world's largest suppliers of streaming pornography online.

Verge is a relatively new cryptocurrency focused on privacy and speed, which on paper makes it a perfect partnership for people who want to pay for pornography. Verge hit an all-time high market cap of $3.6 billion on Christmas Eve 2017, but (like most cryptocurrencies) has taken a bit of a beating over the last few months.

Enter Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, the perennial top five cryptocurrency that's also focused on speed. Fun fact: When Bitcoin's transaction fees became a little exorbitant at the tail end of 2017, Valve replaced Bitcoin with Litecoin as a payment option on Steam, which is testament to its speed and reliability as a mode of online payment.

Charlie Lee has publicly congratulated Verge on its interesting new partnership, but is also openly wondering, why not Litecoin? Which led to this charming exchange.

Which amounts to a pretty healthy (all in good fun) burn on Lee, who admitted in late 2017 that he had sold all his holdings in the cryptocurrency he created. 

Lee sold his Litecoin, because he felt there was a conflict of interest there. He was promoting the currency he created, but his promotion had the ability to affect the price on a day-to-day basis. Some were even accusing him of shorting Litecoin.

But Lee said he would make an exception for pornography!

Your move, Pornhub.

Blockchain Decoded:  CNET looks at the tech powering bitcoin -- and soon, too, a myriad of services that will change your life.

CNET Magazine: Check out a sample of the stories in CNET's newsstand edition.