Prediction Partly held up AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 3/5 debate potential 3/5

Lee: ICO crash will trigger capital flight to Bitcoin and Litecoin

Charlie Lee · 20VC: Litecoin Founder, Charlie Lee on Why ICO's Are The Biggest Threat To Crypto, Why Ethereum Will Run Into Huge Scalability Problems & How To Assess The Trade Off Between Decentralisation & Scale · Sep 15, 2017 · at 17:27

Charlie Lee is the creator of Litecoin. He outlines the market dynamic that will occur if the Initial Coin Offering bubble bursts.

0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.4s

720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark

“I think there will be a slight to quality. So people would Sell their tokens for Ether, and potentially sell their Ether for Bitcoin. So, it would crash a lot of the ICO tokens, a lot of the altcoins, but I think it would be good for the stronger currencies out there, like Bitcoin and Litecoin.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Charlie Lee predicts an ICO market crash will trigger a flight to quality, driving capital from altcoins into Ether, Bitcoin, and Litecoin.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

The claim predicted an ICO market crash would trigger a flight to quality driving capital into Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ether. Under the specified resolution criteria requiring market dominance increases for both Bitcoin and Litecoin, the prediction was only partially realized. During the 2018 ICO crash leading up to the September 15, 2018 horizon, Bitcoin's market dominance increased significantly from an all-time low of 31%–38% in January 2018 to 53%–60% by September 2018. However, Litecoin's market dominance did not increase, declining from 2.0%–2.5% in late 2017 down to 1.6%–1.8% by mid-September 2018 (Ether's dominance also fell to 10%–11%). Thus, while Bitcoin experienced a clear flight to quality, Litecoin did not.

Bitcoin market dominance increased from ~31%-38% in January 2018 to ~53%-60% by September 2018.
Litecoin market dominance declined from ~2.0%-2.5% at the time of prediction/late 2017 to ~1.6%-1.8% by mid-September 2018.
Ether market dominance fell from ~18%-21% in January 2018 to ~10%-11% by September 2018.

Checked against

[1] spark.money [2] forbes.com [3] changehero.io [4] masterthecrypto.com [5] binance.com [6] ricmac.org [7] bitcoinfoundation.org [8] cryptopotato.com

assessed as of 2026-07-23

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

altcoins Bitcoin Ether ICO tokens Litecoin

⚑ Spot an error? Report it

More from Charlie Lee

Prediction Held up

Lee predicts an imminent, massive crash in the ICO market

“So I fear that there's going to be a huge crash in the whole ICO market sometime soon.”

Charlie Lee Sep 15, 2017 ▶ 17:19 20VC: Litecoin Founder, Charlie Lee on Why ICO's Are The Biggest Threat To Crypto, Why Ethereum Will Run Into Huge Scalability Problems & How To Assess The Trade Off Between Decentralisation & Scale

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Lee: Bitcoin will replace fiat as the global reserve currency

“I guess I believe that cryptocurrency will take over fiat currency and become, like, the reserve currency, or Bitcoin could become, will become the reserve currency of the world, where everyone would Base everything on cryptocurrency. This is something that I …”

Charlie Lee Sep 15, 2017 ▶ 19:39 20VC: Litecoin Founder, Charlie Lee on Why ICO's Are The Biggest Threat To Crypto, Why Ethereum Will Run Into Huge Scalability Problems & How To Assess The Trade Off Between Decentralisation & Scale

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Lee: Bitcoin will be store of value while Litecoin handles payments

“Pretty much, Bitcoin is going to be the best store of value, and Litecoin being faster, more nimble, will be, and also have cheaper fees, will be better used for transactions as a payment method.”

Charlie Lee Sep 15, 2017 ▶ 5:04 20VC: Litecoin Founder, Charlie Lee on Why ICO's Are The Biggest Threat To Crypto, Why Ethereum Will Run Into Huge Scalability Problems & How To Assess The Trade Off Between Decentralisation & Scale

Prediction Held up

Lee: Ethereum will run into major scalability problems

“So I think in the future, Ethereum will really run into a lot of scalability issues.”

Charlie Lee Sep 15, 2017 ▶ 6:50 20VC: Litecoin Founder, Charlie Lee on Why ICO's Are The Biggest Threat To Crypto, Why Ethereum Will Run Into Huge Scalability Problems & How To Assess The Trade Off Between Decentralisation & Scale

Assertion Supported

Lee: Bitcoin Cash miners forfeited $300K daily for ideological reasons

“A miner or a group of miners is leaving 300,000 dollars on the table every day because they're mining BCH instead of BTC.”

Charlie Lee Sep 15, 2017 ▶ 13:20 20VC: Litecoin Founder, Charlie Lee on Why ICO's Are The Biggest Threat To Crypto, Why Ethereum Will Run Into Huge Scalability Problems & How To Assess The Trade Off Between Decentralisation & Scale

Insight

Lee: Bitcoin needs consumer-friendly usability over self-custody to succeed

“I think that for Bitcoin to succeed, it has to be easy to use, right? You can't expect everyone to be able to store their own Bitcoins in their own computer or paper wallet and be able to secure it.”

Charlie Lee Sep 15, 2017 ▶ 3:30 20VC: Litecoin Founder, Charlie Lee on Why ICO's Are The Biggest Threat To Crypto, Why Ethereum Will Run Into Huge Scalability Problems & How To Assess The Trade Off Between Decentralisation & Scale

Lee: ICO crash will trigger capital flight to Bitcoin and Litecoin

More from Charlie Lee

Turn any episode into a week of clips.