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.io, 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

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] He attended Vail Mountain School, and graduated in 2007 from the University of Puget Sound.[5]

Voorhees believes the current monetary system has serious systemic problems with counterparty risk,[6] that the Federal Reserve System is "fraudulent"[7], and advocates "the separation of money and state."[8][9] He keeps his assets and finances in bitcoin[10] and is an outspoken opponent of taxation though he does file with the IRS as an American citizen.[11]

Career

Voorhees is the founder and former CEO of Coinapult,[12] 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.[13] On January 30, 2015 he was interviewed on the Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast and discussed his bitcoin career[14] and he appears a number of times in the film Banking on Bitcoin, including in the opening shot.[15]

As of August 2012, as Director of Marketing, Voorhees and BitInstant planned to launch a bitcoin-funded debit card, which would allow bitcoin-funded purchases to be transacted over standard bank networks.[16]

In July 2013, Voorhees sold Satoshi Dice to an anonymous investor for 126,315 bitcoins, valued at $11.5 million US (valued at $971,795.6105 US as of June 4, 2018), and described as the "first big Bitcoin acquisition".[17] He was fined US $50,000 by the Securities and Exchange Commission for selling unregistered securities.[18]

References

  1. ↑ Hopkins, Curt (7 May 2013). "The future of Bitcoin—according to Coinapult's Erik Voorhees". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  2. 1 2 Foley, Stephen (27 June 2013). "The bitcoin believers". The Financial Times. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  3. 1 2 https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2014/33-9592.pdf
  4. ↑ Caffyn, Grace (10 March 2015). "ShapeShift Raises $525k, Reveals Erik Voorhees as Creator". CoinDesk.
  5. ↑ http://www.linkedin.com/pub/erik-voorhees/b/804/385
  6. ↑ Mayer, Trace (30 January 2015). "Erik Voorhees on financial collateral". We Use Coins.
  7. ↑ Voorhees, Erik (24 July 2009). "The Record of the Federal Reserve". Lew Rockwell.
  8. ↑ Voorhees, Erik (June 2011). "Bitcoins and Separation of Money and State".
  9. ↑ Matonis, Jon (24 March 2012). "Bitcoin Doesn't Need A Dongle". Forbes. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  10. ↑ Herrman, John (9 April 2013). "The Man Who Gave His Life To Bitcoin". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
  11. ↑ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=166873.40
  12. ↑ Fehrenbacher, Katie (5 July 2013). "In London, the next wave of Bitcoin growth will be led by startups and innovation". GigaOM.
  13. ↑ "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.
  14. ↑ "Erik Voorhees tells Bitcoin war stories". Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast. 30 January 2015.
  15. ↑ "Banking on Bitcoin". Netflix. December 2016.
  16. ↑ Eha, Brian (22 August 2012). "Get ready for a Bitcoin debit card". CNNMoney.
  17. ↑ Ludwig, Sean (19 July 2013). "First big Bitcoin acquisition: gambling site SatoshiDice bought for $11.5M". VentureBeat.
  18. ↑ Shifflett, Shane; Scheck, Justin (2018-09-28). "How Dirty Money Disappears Into the Black Hole of Cryptocurrency". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2018-09-29.
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