Jump to content

File:Erik Voorhees on Reason TV.jpg

Page contents not supported in other languages.
This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Original file (1,511 × 1,176 pixels, file size: 470 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

Description
English: The ShapeShift founder and early pioneer in the space talks about why bitcoin poses an existential threat to fiat money.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/ReasonTV?sub_... Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Reason.Magaz... Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reason

Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won't get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines.


Few figures in the bitcoin community are as controversial and visionary as Erik Voorhees, founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift.

Back when cryptocurrency was in its infancy and its conferences included lectures delivered to empty rooms, Voorhees was helping to popularize bitcoin's unique attributes with an unregulated online casino called SatoshiDice.

After he sold SatoshiDice, Voorhees was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and was fined $50,000, observing that the investigators didn't seem to understand bitcoin. "As much as I hated government before," he recalled, "then I was like, 'man, this is what these people do, go around ruining innocent people's lives.'"

The son of libertarian businessman and writer Jacques Voorhees, he discovered bitcoin in 2011 while living in New Hampshire as a member of the Free State Project. Voorhees was employee number three at BitInstant, an early exchange backed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and whose founder, Charlie Shrem, ultimately went to prison on charges of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.

Unlike bitcoin maximalists, who insist that bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency with any viable future, Voorhees maintains that other coins do serve a purpose.

In 2017, as fees on the network were climbing, he controversially backed an unsuccessful attempt to scale up bitcoin's ability to process transactions, which critics said would have weakened the network's security and decentralized structure.

At the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Voorhees talked to Reason about the immense growth not just in the market caps of cryptocurrencies but in their economic and cultural legitimacy, the ways they challenge central banks and political power, why he believes in multiple coins, and continuing innovation in digital currency.

Photos: Dennis Brack/Danita Delimont Photography, Newscom; Photos of Erik Voorhees Courtesy of Charlie Shrem; Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin With Sheet of $1 Bills, Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

Music: "On the Way" by Ian Post, Artlist

Shot by Noor Greene; additional graphics by Meredith Bragg and Paul Detrick; intro edited by Noor Greene; interview edited by Ian Keyser; hosted and narrated by Nick Gillespie
Date
Source YouTube: Erik Voorhees: Governments Can't Stop Bitcoin 'Despite All Their Guns and Weapons’ (Time: 2:15) – View/save archived versions on archive.org and archive.today, cropped, brightened
Author ReasonTV

Licensing

This video, screenshot or audio excerpt was originally uploaded on YouTube under a CC license.
Their website states: "YouTube allows users to mark their videos with a Creative Commons CC BY license."
To the uploader: You must provide a link (URL) to the original file and the authorship information if available.
w:en:Creative Commons
attribution
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
You are free:
  • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
  • attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
YouTube logo This file, which was originally posted to YouTube YouTube, was reviewed on 3 January 2022 by the automatic software YouTubeReviewBot, which confirmed that this video was available there under the stated Creative Commons license on that date. This file should not be deleted if the license has changed in the meantime. The Creative Commons license is irrevocable.

This file was manually reviewed by reviewer Yeeno, who confirmed that this file is allowed on Wikimedia Commons.

Creative Commons logo

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents

Items portrayed in this file

depicts

28 June 2021

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current19:40, 3 January 2022Thumbnail for version as of 19:40, 3 January 20221,511 × 1,176 (470 KB)GRuban{{Information |description={{en|1=Erik Voorhees: Governments Can't Stop Bitcoin 'Despite All Their Guns and Weapons’ The ShapeShift founder and early pioneer in the space talks about why bitcoin poses an existential threat to fiat money. ------------------- Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/ReasonTV?sub_... Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Reason.Magaz... Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reason Reason is the planet's leading source of news, poli...

The following page uses this file:

Global file usage

The following other wikis use this file: