Erik Voorhees
Erik Tristan Voorhees is an American startup founder. He is co-founder of the bitcoin company Coinapult, worked as Director of Marketing at BitInstant,[1] and was founder[2] and partial owner of the bitcoin gambling website Satoshi Dice (subsequently sold in July 2013 to an undisclosed buyer).
He was fined by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an unregistered stock offering related to SatoshiDice.[3]
He is also the creator and CEO of the instant bitcoin and altcoin exchange ShapeShift, having founded and operated it under the alias Beorn Gonthier, until revealing his true involvement with the company, as part of a seed funding announcement, in March 2015.[4]
Background[edit]
Originally from Colorado, Voorhees later moved to Dubai, Panama, New York City and New Hampshire, becoming a participant in the Free State Project.[2] According to a US court order in a SEC case, Voorhees is a US citizen as of 3 June 2014.[3]
Voorhees keeps his assets and finances in bitcoin.[5]
Career[edit]
Voorhees is the founder and former CEO of Coinapult,[6] a company that transfers bitcoin via SMS and email. He previously founded Satoshi Dice. Voorhees' company SatoshiDice has been criticized for its high level of gambling traffic, which vastly increased the amount of data stored in the bitcoin "block chain". On March 8, 2013, he was interviewed on noted financial commentator Peter Schiff's podcast by Tom Woods about bitcoin as an alternative currency.[7] He appears a number of times in the film Banking on Bitcoin, including in the opening shot.[8]
In July 2013, Voorhees sold Satoshi Dice to an anonymous investor for 126,315 bitcoins, valued at $11.5 million US (valued at $656,800,000 US as of April 28, 2019), and described as the "first big Bitcoin acquisition".[9] He was fined US $50,000 by the Securities and Exchange Commission for selling unregistered securities.[10]
Voorhees and Charlie Shrem ran BitInstant which counted the Winklevoss twins as investors.[11]
Vorhees was investigated by the SEC for his involvement with Salt Lending Platform's Initial coin offering and the SEC investigated if his serving on Salt's board violated the terms of his earlier settlement 2014 with the SEC. Voorhees noted he was an early contributor but not longer serves in any formal capacity with Salt.[12]
In 2019 Voorhees commented Facebook's Libra (cryptocurrency) was a sign of a maturing industry and he would consider supporting it at Shapeshift.[13][14]
On July 4th, 2021, Voorhees decided to make ShapeShift an entirely decentralized organization. Thus, he shut down all company operations, open-sourced the platform, and issued newly minted FOX tokens to the network's stakeholders. ShapeShift now operates as a decentralized exchange. [15]
References[edit]
- ↑ Hopkins, Curt (7 May 2013). "The future of Bitcoin—according to Coinapult's Erik Voorhees". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Foley, Stephen (27 June 2013). "The bitcoin believers". The Financial Times. Archived from the original on 15 July 2013. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2014/33-9592.pdf
- ↑ Shifflett, Justin Scheck and Shane (28 September 2018). "How Dirty Money Disappears Into the Black Hole of Cryptocurrency". WSJ. Archived from the original on 28 September 2018. Retrieved 2019-06-07.
- ↑ Herrman, John (9 April 2013). "The Man Who Gave His Life To Bitcoin". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
- ↑ Fehrenbacher, Katie (5 July 2013). "In London, the next wave of Bitcoin growth will be led by startups and innovation". GigaOM.
- ↑ "The Ultimate Bitcoin Showdown. Erik Voorhees, Free State Project participant & BitCoin official, on why Peter Schiff is wrong on Bitcoin". The Peter Schiff Podcast. 2 December 2013.
- ↑ "Banking on Bitcoin". Netflix. December 2016.
- ↑ Ludwig, Sean (19 July 2013). "First big Bitcoin acquisition: gambling site SatoshiDice bought for $11.5M". VentureBeat.
- ↑ Shifflett, Shane; Scheck, Justin (2018-09-28). "How Dirty Money Disappears Into the Black Hole of Cryptocurrency". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2018-09-29.
- ↑ Tucker, Hank (2019-07-10). "Author Who Inspired 'The Social Network' Changes Mind On Winklevoss Twins, Expects Movie Sequel". Forbes. Retrieved 2019-07-26.
- ↑ Michaels, Dave; Scheck, Justin (2018-11-15). "Firm Tied to Cryptocurrency Entrepreneur Faces SEC Investigation". WSJ. Retrieved 2019-07-26.
- ↑ Noto, Anthony (2019-06-28). "Bitcoin review: ShapeShift wants in on the Facebook Libra action". BizJournals. Retrieved 2019-07-26.
- ↑ Howell O'Neill, Patrick (2019-06-19). "How the Cryptocurrency World Is Responding to Facebook's Libra". Gizmodo. Retrieved 2019-07-26.
- ↑ Bourgi, Sam. "ShapeShift to decentralize entire company, plans for largest airdrop in history". cointelegraph.com. Cointelegraph. Retrieved 30 September 2021.
Further reading[edit]
- del Castillo, Michael (January 3, 2019). "Bitcoin's Last Gunslinger". Forbes.
External links[edit]
- Erik Voorhees on TwitterLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 23: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
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