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🤩 Erik Voorhees: Bitcoin is the most powerful financial instrument ever created by humans.

1. Bitcoin and Ethereum.

• ETH and BTC have achieved an almost unbreakable network effect.
• Ethereum is the “king of smart contracts” and there is no scenario where it loses its lead.
• Base will become the dominant L2 on Ethereum.
• L2 usability is still weak, but the ecosystem wins thanks to the network effect.

2. Why he believed in Bitcoin.

• Bitcoin solved a fundamental problem: state control over money → distorted markets.
• Gold cannot be protected from states, since it is physical.
• Bitcoin is a rare, market-based asset, protected mathematically and without physical limitations.
• Voorhees’ first reaction to BTC: “seems like a scam.” But in 30 minutes he realized — “it’s the best financial technology I’ve ever seen.”

3. Future: Bitcoin as world money.

• BTC will become the dominant monetary asset on the planet.
• Gold won’t be worth zero, but it will lose its role as the base of the global financial system.
• The shift will happen after the collapse of the public debt market — a reset of the financial system is inevitable.
• Timeline: about 5-15 years.

4. Financial collapse.

• People in the Western world have never seen a true collapse — it will be a “horrific, era-defining event.”
• The danger is that, after the collapse, people will try to solve the problems with the same methods that created them.

5. Main idea – separation between money and state.

• This is Bitcoin’s main purpose.
• Bitcoin didn’t ask anyone’s permission — it earned its place in society organically.
• Money is a much more important institution than religion, and the state shouldn’t control it.

6. On states buying BTC.

• Financially, it’s good for BTC holders, but philosophically it’s bad.
• States are the worst guardians of capital.
• Voorhees prefers Bitcoin to be held by individuals and private companies.

7. Crypto and the state: “it’s disgusting, but inevitable.”

• Lobbying and meetings with politicians are unpleasant, but inevitable in today’s reality.
• The problem isn’t crypto, but the size of the state.
• If Bitcoin becomes the global standard, states will inevitably shrink economically, since they won’t be able to devalue the currency.

8. SEC and regulation.

• The worst period for the SEC was the Gary Gensler era.
• Now, the regulator is better.
• He respects Hester Peirce as “the only light” in the dark years.

9. Prediction markets.

• Prediction markets are cool.
• Augur came too early. Polymarket is an example of successful growth.
• “Sufficient decentralization” is important — it’s not a binary concept, but a set of criteria.

10. DAO

• DAO is not a perfect model, but an experimental form of coordination.
• Making a DAO a “commune” without hierarchy is a mistake.
• DAOs need leaders and structure, otherwise they fail.
• The ShapeShift DAO achieved its goal — the app lives without a company.

11. AI + tokens.

• The world is heading toward the tokenization of all financial assets.
• AI will manage the economy and tokens will be the record system.
• Crypto was “created for machines” from the beginning — AI handles cryptography perfectly.

Erik Voorhees — one of the first Bitcoin maximalists, founder of ShapeShift, and one of the main ideologists of the movement for the separation between money and state.