Erik Voorhees

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Erik Tristan Voorhees
Voorhees interviewed by Reason TV in 2021
NationalityAmerican-Panamanian
Educationthe University of Puget Sound (2007)
OccupationCryptocurrency entrepreneur

Erik Tristan Voorhees is an American cryptocurrency entrepreneur and founder of the cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift. He also co-founded Satoshi Dice and was the Director of Marketing at BitInstant. He has been referred to as a crypto-libertarian and has advocated for "the separation of money and state".[1][2]

In 2014, Erik Voorhees settled a dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for over $50,000 regarding unregistered bitcoin-denominated share offerings between May 2012 and February 2013.

Biography[edit]

Voorhees was born in Danbury, Connecticut in 1984,[3] and was raised in Colorado.[4] In 2003, Voorhees enrolled at the University of Puget Sound, where he became friends with a fellow student named Nic Cary who would subsequently introduce to Voorhees Bitcoin and later founded Blockchain.com. After graduating, Voorhees moved to Dubai, where he worked as a communications manager for a real estate company.[3] Since 2013, he has been living in Panama.[5]

Cryptocurrency career[edit]

According to the Wall Street Journal, Voorhees first encountered Bitcoin in 2011.[3] His discovery of the Bitcoin coincided with his involvement in the Free State Project, an initiative aimed at recruiting 20,000 libertarians to relocate to New Hampshire.[6]

In an August 2012 CNN article, Voorhees was described as BitInstant's head of communications,[7] while an Ars Technica article quoted him as BitInstant's director of marketing.[8]

In April 2012, Voorhees launched Satoshi Dice, a bitcoin gambling site.[9] Satoshi Dice would at one point in time account for half of all Bitcoin transaction volume.[10]: ch. 10  Around 2012, after becoming a millionaire from his cryptocurrency investments, Voorhees indicated that he had almost completely cashed out, but clarified that he meant cashing out of traditional dollars, not cryptocurrencies.[11] In 2013, he sold Satoshi Dice for $11.5 million worth of bitcoin.[12] In 2014, Voorhees paid $50,000 to the SEC to settle an investigation into allegations of selling unregistered securities, associated with his sale of shares of SatoshiDice.[13][14]

In July 2014, Voorhees launched ShapeShift, a digital currency exchange, in Switzerland, as a response to the downfall of the Mt. Gox exchange.[15] In 2014, an interview with him was included in the documentary The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin. In 2017 he stated he supported Segwit2x in the regards to the Bitcoin scalability problem.[16] ShapeShift, unlike many exchanges, did not require user identification, allowing for anonymous transactions. This lack of oversight enabled criminals, including North Korean hackers and Ponzi scheme operators, to launder nearly $90 million in criminal proceeds, with ShapeShift processing the largest portion of these funds among exchanges with U.S. presence. ShapeShift's policy facilitated the conversion of traceable cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin into untraceable ones like Monero, effectively obscuring the money trail.[4][6]

In 2014, Erik Voorhees settled a dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for over $50,000 regarding unregistered bitcoin-denominated share offerings between May 2012 and February 2013.[17]

In 2018, Erik Voorhees was implicated in an SEC investigation into a $50 million cryptocurrency sale by Salt Lending Holdings Inc., where he was involved in fundraising. WSJ stated, that the SEC had been analysing whether Salt's token sale should have been registered as a securities offering and if it had violated a 2014 settlement banning Voorhees from such fundraising. As it was stated in a previous WSJ significant investigation on Voorhees,[18] ShapeShift, run by Voorhees, has been used by criminals to launder money, leading to law enforcement scrutiny and Voorhees has previously settled with the SEC for conducting an illegal stock offering for an internet gambling company, and his involvement with Salt's private offering raises legal concerns regarding his compliance with SEC regulations.[19]

In 2022, Voorhees was quoted in media in opposition to financial surveillance, in relating to a public spat he had with Sam Bankman-Fried, as SBF was promoting regulation of the crypto industry and Voorhees was opposed to it.[20][2]: ch. 38 [21]: ch. 13 [22]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Raskin, Max (2021-02-10). "Can You Get Rich With Bitcoin? Sure, but Slowly". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
  2. ^ a b Dale, Brady (2023). SBF: how the FTX bankruptcy unwound crypto's very bad good guy. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley. ISBN 9781394196074.
  3. ^ a b c del Castillo, Michael (2019-01-03). "Bitcoin's Last Gunslinger". Forbes. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
  4. ^ a b Casey, Michael J.; Stynes, Tess (2014-06-03). "Bitcoin Entrepreneur Agrees to Pay $50,000 to Settle SEC Charges". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2023-12-29.
  5. ^ Foley, Stephen; Wild, Jane (June 14, 2013). "The bitcoin believers". Financial Times Magazine. Archived from the original on June 20, 2013. Retrieved April 21, 2024.
  6. ^ a b Scheck, Justin; Shifflett, Shane (2018-09-28). "How Dirty Money Disappears Into the Black Hole of Cryptocurrency". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2023-12-29.
  7. ^ Eha, Brian Patrick (2012-08-22). "Get ready for BitInstant's Bitcoin debit card". CNN Money. Retrieved 2023-12-29.
  8. ^ Farivar, Cyrus (2012-08-21). "Bitcoin company says debit cards coming in two months". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2023-11-17.
  9. ^ Winter, Caroline (2013-01-03). "Bitcoin: Making Online Gambling Legal in the U.S.?". Bloomberg. Retrieved 2023-11-17.
  10. ^ Vigna, Paul (2016). The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order. Picador. ISBN 978-1250081551.
  11. ^ Raskin, Max (2021-02-10). "Opinion | Can You Get Rich With Bitcoin? Sure, but Slowly". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  12. ^ "First big Bitcoin acquisition: gambling site SatoshiDice bought for $11.5M". GamesBeat. VentureBeat. 2013-07-19. Retrieved 2023-11-17.
  13. ^ Silverman, Gary (2021-09-14). "Cryptocurrency: rise of decentralised finance sparks 'dirty money' fears". Financial Times. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
  14. ^ Michaels, Dave; Scheck, Justin; Shifflett, Shane (2018-11-15). "Firm Tied to Cryptocurrency Entrepreneur Faces SEC Investigation". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2023-12-29.
  15. ^ Eha, Brian Patrick (2014-02-25). "Bitcoin After the Mt. Gox Meltdown". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2023-11-17.
  16. ^ Eha, Patrick (2017-08-16). "'This is how money should be': Digital asset pioneer Erik Voorhees". Reuters. Retrieved 2023-12-29.
  17. ^ Scheck, Justin; Shifflett, Shane (2018-09-28). "How Dirty Money Disappears Into the Black Hole of Cryptocurrency". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  18. ^ Raskin, Max (2021-02-10). "Can You Get Rich With Bitcoin? Sure, but Slowly". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
  19. ^ Michaels, Dave; Scheck, Justin; Shifflett, Shane (2018-11-15). "Firm Tied to Cryptocurrency Entrepreneur Faces SEC Investigation". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  20. ^ Berwick, Angus (2022-11-23). "Crypto exchanges enabled online child sex-abuse profiteer". Reuters. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
  21. ^ Armstrong, Ben (2023). Catching Up to FTX: Lessons Learned in My Crusade Against Corruption, Fraud, and Bad Hair. Wiley. ISBN 978-1394210329.
  22. ^ Roberts, Jeff John (2022-10-21). "Sam Bankman-Fried, Erik Voorhees and the battle for crypto's soul". Reuters. Retrieved 2023-12-29.
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