ShapeShift has no user accounts, signup, or registration process whatsoever. But it's faster and far more convenient than traditional exchanges.
— Erik Voorhees
When we started ShapeShift, a future world of natively digital assets was very theoretical.
Bitcoin will hit thousands of dollars per coin, because it's worth at least that much, or it's worth zero.
I was very excited about a currency that was not controlled by a central government, that could be a free market currency. That was all the incentive I needed to dedicate my life to it.
Whenever the price of cryptocurrency is rallying, people start spending a lot more.
Credits in your PayPal account are really just USD-backed - they are not a unique currency themselves. Other 'digital currencies,' such as Facebook Credits, can be created out of nothing and without limit, so they are not serious money.
Digital currency is now a misnomer for Bitcoin. It can be used as currency, but it can be used for many things.
In the longterm for Bitcoin, Gox needed to go away.
Unfortunately, slow and steady in any financial market is actually impossible.
ShapeShift, like SatoshiDICE before it, demonstrated how an old business could operate in a brand new way because of the properties of cryptocurrencies.
The value of Bitcoin is astronomical, but the price goes all over the place as a million buyers and sellers try to figure out what that value is and how likely it is to manifest.
Bitcoin is open-source, global, and requires no permission from anybody, so thousands of entrepreneurs are gravitating in and building their vision.
Mt. Gox was a teachable moment for everyone in the Bitcoin community, and ShapeShift has innovated these problems out of the picture.
Like the Internet, Bitcoin will change the way people interact and do business around the world.
Most 'digital currencies' are not really digital currencies at all.
The Dwolla incident was to be expected. The government will go after sites that it thinks are supposed to register as money transmitters. Some Bitcoin companies will register as such, and some won't, but business will carry on regardless.
Bitcoin is absolutely the Wild West of finance, and thank goodness. It represents a whole legion of adventurers and entrepreneurs, of risk takers, inventors, and problem solvers. It is the frontier. Huge amounts of wealth will be created and destroyed as this new landscape is mapped out.
If you see a market that has slow and steady growth long enough, you'll start to front-run it, and that slow and steady growth will start turning into steeper growth, and that will accelerate the process.
Cryptocurrencies allowed non-custodial exchange, without users having to sign up or create accounts.
The number of industries, communities, habits, traditions, and even interpersonal interactions that Bitcoin has the potential to revolutionize is massive.
Bitcoin is very ideologically fulfilling, it's my form of political activism, but it's also a huge business opportunity.
I'm much more confident with crypto than with banks or fiat currency because I can actually control it, and the money supply is transparent, stated up front. It makes online shopping a lot easier and a lot safer.
Bitcoin is two things which share a name. One, it's a payment system, and two, it's a currency. You use the Bitcoin payment system to send bitcoins as currency from one account holder to another. The transfer is instantaneous, carries no fee, works anywhere in the world, and is private.
The big exchanges that hold customer deposits are a big target for hackers, and unfortunately, most bitcoin exchanges store user funds.
I have no problem with the financial industry inviting the Trojan Horse of blockchain technology into their walled garden. Because I know how powerful the technology is.
You cannot have an asset that goes up in price 1% every month or 1% every six months or every day without people starting to start thinking it'll do the same tomorrow, so that's why these bubbles form.
Personally, I had over 550 BTC in Gox. I will never get any of that back.
