Reviving a Dead Coin- The Cool Little Story of Litecoinplus

When first learning about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, one of the aspects that interested me was the concept of decentralization. Basically, no single authority could issue Bitcoin. It had to be mined. This is one of the main features of the currency, and has been incorporated into the design of many other cryptos as well.

One of the odd quirks about decentralization is that, since no one authority issues it, no one authority keeps it alive. If there is a thriving community of miners, it stays active. If all the miners disappear, the coin goes dormant.

In that sense, a decentralized coin never truly dies. Even if a coin goes dormant, another person could find the blockchain, and theoretically revive it. I heard about this when first learning about Bitcoin.

Well, it is more than a theory now. I found a coin that was pretty much dead, and has been revived in the past few months. It's called Litecoinplus.

Litecoinplus was created back in 2014. It was designed to be used as an asset, in the mold of Bitcoinplus. However, it seems one of the original developers used the coin simply as a scam to steal around $20,000. This pretty much domed the coin, as interest totally evaporated.

One member of the development team tried to keep it alive, without any other interest, the coin seemed like it would be dead.

Then about two and a half years later, a member of bitcointalk (who goes by "Spidersbox") discovered the coin, and had some interest in reviving it. He thought it would have a chance with a couple of tweaks.

Basically, he got a copy of the blockchain, analyzed the code, fixed a few bugs and increased the supply, redid the wallet, forked the coin, and tried to breathe it back to life.

And over the past few months, it's seemed to work.

Litecoinplus is now listed on an exchange, and has a bunch of active miners. The market cap and activity have exceeded what the coin did back in 2014. Maybe the coin itself will be successful yet.