LCC's terrible rollout!

LitecoinCash hit the cyrptosphere with a bang Sunday, February 18th. The creators offered 10:1 for each LTC you held at the fork. While this was exciting and garnered a lot of interest, the LCC team failed miserably in instructing holders of LTC on how to get/claim their windfall.

The hoops one had to jump through to prepare/claim their LCC were onerous, difficult, and downright confusing. Their website, www.litecoinca.sh, suggested that if you held LTC anywhere, you would get the LCC payout. However, they were less than clear on what to do if your LTC was held in an exchange like Coinbase, GDAX, other. Saying only "If your LTC is stored by a third party such as an exchange, then you must inquire with them about claiming your Litecoin Cash."

Hundreds of thousands of people, unclear on the transfer process, not having an external wallet, or just not clear on the process seem to have lost out, at least in the near term.

Personally, I was out of town during the days leading up to and after the fork and was unable to jump through the hoops to prepare. Since my LTC was held at GDAX, I proceeded to "inquire with them about claiming your Litecoin Cash." As Coinbase/GDAX holds your private keys, they now hold/own any LCC I might have been able to claim. Saying in an email "At this time, Coinbase has made no public decision or announcement regarding support for this currency" and "if you want to guarantee you receive the the new currencies that correspond to your existing balances, please withdraw the corresponding funds to an external wallet that has already announced plans to support the new currency, or where you hold your own private keys, before the event occurs." The latter statement would have been more useful had they put that on their website pre-launch!

These statements offered cold comfort to those who fell into this trap. After doing some research, Coinbase ran into a similar problem during the Bitcoin Cash launch; confusing account holders, bungling the rollout, and not properly crediting accounts. One would have thought they'd have learned their lesson. Alas, after threat of multiple Class-Action Lawsuits and vocal cries of foul, they finally got on board and mostly credited account holders.

Now, Coinbase/GDAX is holding millions of LCC that belong to customers and refusing to release them! Once again, Class-Action lawsuit threats are flying and Coinbase/GDAX is on the ropes. At this time, the only comfort those of us who missed the fork is the the slim possibility that Coinbase/GDAX will begin trading LCC and then MIGHT credit account holders.

I hope this post gets out to the affected community and will spur people to write them, threaten them with lawsuits, generally bombard them with inquiries, or leave them all together.

On a final note, Charlie Lee stated the "LCC is a scam." Post launch, there's a lot to suggest he might have been correct. While the litecoinca.sh site lists five exchanges for their product, only one, yobit.net, seems to be trading LCC. However, if you didn't already have an LCC wallet in your account or drop your shares there earlier, it now seems you can't do it at all. When you try to get an LCC wallet, the site states "Deposit for such currency is temporary off." WOW!

So, in closing, best of luck to all who got screwed, got left out, or just "Waiting for Godot."

• please comment on your experience with the LCC rollout, suggestions, ideas or actions.

Cheers!