Entrepreneur Erik Tristan Voorhees is of American and Panamanian descent. He served as the director of marketing at the BitInstant exchange, co-created the Bitcoin firm Coinapult that distributes money by SMS and email, and founded and owned a portion of the Bitcoin gaming website Satoshi Dice before selling it to an unnamed buyer in July 2013. Voorhees was stationed in Colorado before joining the Free State Project and afterwards resided in Dubai, Panama, New York City, and New Hampshire.
In addition, Voorhees is the founder and CEO of ShapeShift, an instant Bitcoin and altcoin exchange that he invented and ran until March 2015, when he announced his affiliation with the business as part of an announcement for seed funding. Some of his business endeavors have led to fines and legal problems with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Voorhees is a vocal libertarian who is against taxation, financial regulation, and all forms of government. ShapeShift, which is a free service, is a reflection of his political and economic views.
2023
On September 11, Erik Voorhees, the CEO of ShapeShift, a cryptocurrency exchange and an early adopter of Bitcoin, gave the keynote address that launched Permissionless II and sparked intense discussion within the community. During his speech, Voorhees promoted the notion of a decentralized, rule-based transaction governance structure, arguing that “code is better than law”. Although his statement hit resonated to someone, Yuga Cohler, a senior staff software engineer at Coinbase, also took issue with it.
Cohler’s criticism of Voorhees’ speech was harsh, labeling it as “jejune, anti-democratic, and disingenuous.” Even if Voorhees’ message could resonate with libertarians, he said, it is fundamentally disconnected from the reality of widespread cryptocurrency acceptance and, as such, is “worthy of ignoring.”
Voorhees’ speech included the idea that codes ought to replace existing legal frameworks as one of its main points. He maintained that systems that are opaque and politically motivated may not provide the same results as transparent, mathematically based standards. Although Cohler agreed that this viewpoint had value, he disagreed with Voorhees’ contempt for democratic institutions.
2022
In response to a G20 report from October 13, 2020, which stated that its members would complete regulatory stablecoin frameworks as well as research and select designs, technologies, and experiments for CBDCs, Voorhees tweeted on October 14, 2020: “By the end of 2022 Bitcoin will already be bigger than half of them.”
ShapeShift’s open-source software and governance will progressively move to owners of the exchange’s FOX token, which has already been issued to ShapeShift’s staff, investors, and users, in line with Voorhees’ aim of creating a decentralized, immutable, and borderless financial system. The largest airdrop in history will take place in 2022, when every active user will get 340 million FOX tokens as part of a giveaway.
The decision was made, according to Vorhees, who explained the reasoning in a Medium post, “Decentralization has become not merely a feasible organizational approach, but the crucial paradigm for enabling the borderless, immutable financial system for which so many of us fervently support.”
Latest news about Erik Voorhees
Nereus Finance has launched a new Ethereum-based NFT collection called “Shapeshifters,” featuring 10,000 artworks with various traits. The collection grants holders access to community discord channels and other benefits of the Nereus Finance Protocol. The first NFT can be minted for free, followed by tokens priced at 0.01 ETH for premium members, 0.02 ETH for the allowlist, and 0.05 ETH for the general audience. The collection will launch in three steps, starting with the “Elite” allowlist.
Latest Social posts of Erik Voorhees
Don't try to 100x in one cycle. That is horrible advice.
Don't try to go from poor to rich in one blast.
Go from poor to not poor, then to very comfortable, then to rich, over multiple cycles and with wisdom.
