Scaling Debate and the Future of Bitcoin

Today we have a very special episode which has a slightly different format than our other interviews. Typically we have a discussion on entrepreneurship and the freedom it can bring to your personal life. Today’s episode is an in-depth conversation about Scaling Bitcoin with TWO of it’s earliest pioneers, Roger Ver and Erik Voorhees.
For anyone who is familiar with Bitcoin, the names Roger Ver and Erik Voorhees should be very familiar. They are two early and vocal Bitcoin pioneers who have been instrumental in its success.
Don’t worry if you don’t know Erik and Roger; you will soon. They have incredible insights on the importance of Bitcoin as well as how it will continue to revolutionize both Money and the Financial System. I think we can all agree that the current banking model is broken, takes advantage of us and needs re-worked. This is exactly what Erik, Roger and Bitcoin are doing.
Erik Voorhees currently runs www. ShapeShift.io which is the safest, easiest and most private way to exchange almost any crypto-currency. Within minutes (or possibly seconds) you can exchange between Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ether, Dash, DAO and many more. They don’t store your personal information, therefore it cannot be stolen (like we are seeing in the big banks and credit card companies recently). He also founded and ran SatoshiDice which at its prime accounted for 50% (yes, that’s half) of ALL the Bitcoin traffic. Impressive, I know.
Roger Ver was the first Bitcoin startup investor. Seriously, he was the first. His company MemoryDealers.com was the first store of size to accept Bitcoin as a payment option. He also created www. BitcoinStore.com which allowed Bitcoin users to purchase over 100,000 products with their new, digital-cash. This was long before the large retails jump on board, specifically Newegg.com, Tigerdirect.com, Dell.com, etc.
Erik and Roger met at the FIRST Bitcoin conference in New York. Erik was involved in the Free State Project and told Roger that they should meet and chat. After handing Roger his business card that read ‘I am friends with Satoshi’ (the presumed creator of Bitcoin) it was an obvious friendship.

This post was published at Mises Canada on JUNE 29, 2016.