Erik Voorhees

Erik Tristan Voorhees is an American startup founder. He is a co-founder of the bitcoin company Coinapult, worked as Director of Marketing at BitInstant, and was the founder 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.

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.

Originally from Colorado, Voorhees later moved to Dubai, Panama, New York City and New Hampshire, becoming a participant in the Free State Project. According to a US court order in an SEC case, Voorhees is a US citizen as of 3 June 2014.

Voorhees is the founder and former CEO of Coinapult, 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 "blockchain". On March 8, 2013, he was interviewed on noted financial commentator Peter Schiff's podcast by Tom Woods about Bitcoin as an alternative currency. He appears a number of times in the film Banking on Bitcoin, including in the opening shot.

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". He was fined US $50,000 by the Securities and Exchange Commission for selling unregistered securities.

Voorhees and Charlie Shrem ran BitInstant which counted the Winklevoss twins as investors.

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 in 2014 with the SEC. Voorhees noted he was an early contributor but no longer serves in any formal capacity with Salt.

In 2019 Voorhees commented Facebook's Libra (cryptocurrency) was a sign of a maturing industry and that he would consider supporting it at Shapeshift.

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.

Erik Voorhees is a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency world, known for his vision of creating a decentralized financial system through blockchain technology. As the founder and former CEO of Coinapult, he worked to transfer Bitcoin via SMS and email, making it easier for people to use cryptocurrencies in their daily lives. He also founded Satoshi Dice, which facilitated gambling transactions using Bitcoin. While the platform faced criticism for its high level of gambling traffic, it was later sold for 126,315 bitcoins, worth $11.5 million at the time, in what was considered the "first big Bitcoin acquisition."

Voorhees has been a strong advocate for Bitcoin and alternative currencies and has been interviewed by notable financial commentators on the topic. He has also faced regulatory issues, including a $50,000 fine by the Securities and Exchange Commission for selling unregistered securities. Despite these challenges, he has remained committed to the development of decentralized financial systems.