Litecoin halving looms, founder touts silver collectible card loaded with Litecoin

Author: Frederick Munawa, CoinDesk; Compiler: Songxue, Jinse Finance

The Litecoin Foundation and cryptocurrency hardware wallet maker Ballet have announced the upcoming sale of 500 collectible cards – made of 50 grams of pure silver and preloaded with at least 6.25 Litecoin (LTC).

The cards will commemorate the blockchain’s third halving event, which is expected to happen on Wednesday.

Sales are expected later this month at approximately $1,000 per card, but estimated tangible value at approximately $621.

** Litecoin is sometimes referred to as "digital silver", while Bitcoin is hailed as "digital gold". **

Litecoin founder Charlie Lee and his brother Bobby Lee appear to be launching a new crypto promotion based on this claim, in an attempt to capitalize on the sudden surge in interest in the project. interest, thanks to the quadrennial "halving" event.

Bobby Lee is the CEO and co-founder of Ballet, a maker of special cards for "cold storage," or keeping cryptocurrencies offline. He teamed up with his younger brother, Charlie Lee, executive director of the Litecoin Foundation, to create 500 collectible cards made of 99.9% pure silver to commemorate the blockchain's third halving.

**The cards themselves (silver coins only) are worth about $40 each, but they can also be loaded with 6.25 LTC, or $581. They're expected to sell for around $1,000, meaning the premium represents roughly intangible value to buyers. ** Charlie Lee stated that all proceeds from the sale will be donated to the Litecoin Foundation to promote blockchain adoption and growth.

2020 Litecoin Cold Storage Card ( Ballet Crypto)

The brothers announced the news in a Twitter livestream, a week before Litecoin's expected August 2 halving event.

Litecoin was created in 2011 as a "fork" or clone of the Bitcoin blockchain, and much like Bitcoin, the Litecoin network rewards miners who successfully mine transaction blocks with a predetermined number of coins. This reward (called the "subsidy") is halved every 840,000 blocks (approximately every four years). The third halving will take place on Wednesday, reducing the current 12.5 Litecoin (LTC) subsidy to 6.25 LTC. The original subsidy was 50 LTC.

Sometime after the halving event, Charlie Lee will pay at least 6.25 LTC to reimburse miners from Litecoinpool, one of the oldest and largest Litecoin mining pools, who have agreed to send their block subsidy - which will also be 6.25 LTC - sent directly to the blockchain address associated with the silver card, all made of 50 grams of 99.9% pure silver (also known as "999 sterling silver").

That means the cards are worth at least 6.25 LTC, plus the market value of 50 grams of silver, which at the time of publication is hovering at just under 80 cents per gram (roughly $40 per card).

"It's a silver card," Charlie Lee explained. “So even if Litecoin goes to zero, it’s still worth the price of silver.”

** Bobby Lee stated that the collectibles are about the size of a credit card and have double-layer QR code stickers, the top layer shows the Litecoin deposit address, and the hidden bottom layer shows the encrypted private key (EPK). The passphrase used to decrypt the private key can be accessed by scratching off the second part below the QR code. **

The passphrase and EPK can then be submitted to Ballet's mobile app to decrypt the private key via the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 38 algorithm, according to Bobby Lee. **

"That's the magic of the BIP38 industry standard," said Bobby Lee. “This was invented 10 years ago by the creator of the Casascius token, Michael Caldwell.”

Litecoin commemorative cards will go on sale sometime after the August halving event and will cost around $1,000.

"About $1,000," said the litecoin creator. “We may auction some, like the first 20, 21, etc. We will sell the rest at a fixed price,” he added. "Maybe I'll sign some of them. We haven't decided yet."

As of the time of this report, LTC has risen slightly from $91.20 to $92.43 since the brothers went live.