Litecoin, the little brother of bitcoin, is shining brightly after five years of stagnancy. The price of per LTC has surged from $29.4 on June 16 to a new high of $56.4 on Okcoin this Monday.

Charlie Lee, creator of litecoin, says that many factors are behind the spike, including his resignation from Coinbase.

Last Friday, Lee tweeted that he was leaving Coinbase to focus on litecoin development.

This is the first major move for the litecoin community since Segwit was activated on litecoin in May. The news comes as a welcome surprise to Chinese litecoiners who believe that it will lead to a giant price rise. Some large litecoin holders “jokingly” bet that this could help litecoin rise to 1000 yuan.

It is also worth mentioning that Lee would only take one litecoin from the litecoin foundation as his salary. When be asked how many litecoins he has, he noted that he does not have as many litecoins as people have imagined.

“I know Satoshi has 1 million bitcoins, but I don’t have that many litecoins, way less than 1 million. I mined some of my litecoins and bought some from exchanges.”

At this particular moment, many believe litecoin could take advantage of bitcoin’s civil war to move to a higher level.

As to the difference between litecoin and bitcoin, Lee believed that though bitcoin is mostly likely to grow into a cryptocurrency featuring absolute security and complete decentralization, litecoin boasts advantages like faster confirmation and lower transaction fees.

“Litecoin is perfectly complementary to bitcoin. Their networks are interconnected and litecoin can be exchanged to bitcoin easily and seamlessly. Both of them will enable the world to explore the inherent and potential value of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment.”

Apart from bitcoin, Lee also talked about other cryptocurrencies.

“This is not a game of winner takes all. Each of them could be used for different purposes, say bitcoin for the store of value, litecoin for payment and ethereum for an application platform.”

But the hard fact is that the value of litecoin has yet to be widely recognized due to its lack of practical applications. The good news is that someone donated 438 litecoins to the Litecoin Foundation that can help the litecoin development team work on potential applications.