SegWit (BIP 91) was activated on the 24th of August, 2017 on the mainnet Bitcoin network. SegWit implementation and activation were very contentious at the time. There were many naysayers who argued that SegWit was not safe and funds held on a SegWit address could be hacked or stolen from their owner.
A Short Story
On May 13th, 2017 an anonymous Redditor posted a thread in r/litecoin titled $1MM segwit bounty which included a link to the wallet with a deposit of 40,338.21 LTC ($1,000,000 USD at the time) held in a SegWit address asking the public to effectively "come and take it". Time went by, and the funds remained on full display on the blockchain. No one was up to challenge and SegWit was proven safe. A few months later, not without some more controversy which I will cover in another article, on August 24th SegWit activated on Bitcoin.
Today, in hindsight, one could reasonably make the argument that had the above not happened and consequently SegWit not proven to be safe, things may have turned out much differently. Thank goodness Satoshi Nakamoto stayed with Bitcoin through these tough times to pull off a stunt like this.
No? Not exactly how you remember it?
Ok, I give. It wasn't Satoshi Nakamoto who took this risk and made this contribution to Bitcoin. It was in fact, Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin. Charlie had just finished fighting the battle to have SegWit activated on Litecoin (another great story) just a few months earlier and immediately jumped in to help advance Bitcoin development.
The takeaway here is that Charlie has stuck with Litecoin and Bitcoin development for over 10 years running. Charlie continues to give to Litecoin and the Litecoin community at large by devoting large sums of time and providing large sums of money to further its development. As far as this author can tell, he does it because he loves it. As we all know Charlie "infamously" divested his Litecoin holdings, which many have incorrectly branded as "selling out". However, anyone capable of critical thinking should be able to recognize that it was exactly this action by Charlie that proves his continuing work on the Litecoin project is a labor of love and is not motivated by his own greed.
Satoshi as far as anyone knows has cut and run from Bitcoin (estimated to have 4% of the bitcoin supply) and hasn't contributed in well over 10 years. On the other hand, SatoshiLite continues to add his invaluable additions to Litecoin and I couldn't be more grateful.
