ShapeShift with Erik Voorhees

“The Federal Reserve System is fraudulent. Whatever its stated purpose, its effective purpose is to create a mechanism of deficit spending by politicians, through the insidious invisible taxation of monetary debasement (aka inflation).”

These are the words of Erik Voorhees, the CEO of crypto financial exchange ShapeShift. Long before he started ShapeShift, Erik was opposed to some of the core principles of the global financial system, in which he sees the US dollar as a means of control. As an early adopter of Bitcoin, he saw a way to make financial transactions without using fiat currency.

Erik’s company ShapeShift allows users to convert different digital currencies between each other. Because it only makes exchanges of currencies and does not hold much currency at any time, ShapeShift is resilient to hacking.

In this episode, Erik and I discussed his economic philosophy, and how that informs his affinity for cryptocurrencies. Erik also describes the architecture of ShapeShift, and gives some advice for how to think about building businesses around cryptocurrencies. ShapeShift has had a few near-death experiences, like any startup, and there is a useful story in this episode about how to survive and recover from a serious business setback.

Transcript

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