 Many of you probably see crypto as a tool to make a ton of money. Well, Eric Voorhees, the CEO of ShapeShift, believes crypto's ultimate goal is creating a new financial system, a system where money is separated from the state and governed by open immutable code. What should the price of money be? That's a question for markets, not for politicians, not for banks to decide for us. But states won't give up their control over money without a fight, and the battle for the future of finals may have already started. In recent months, United States regulators have moved against the world's largest crypto companies, cutting off ties linking crypto with a traditional banking system. So is the crypto industry facing its most crucial tests? And can open immutable code prevail against the power of the state? I talked about it in my conversation with Eric Voorhees, the CEO of ShapeShift and one of the most influential people in crypto according to Cointelegraph's Top 100 list. Before we start, don't forget to like the video and subscribe to our channel. I'm Giovanni, on this show, we challenge the ideas that shape the world of crypto. In each episode, we assess a crypto narrative, a macro-economic outlook, or a potentially disruptive technology. Only the most solid ideas will make it to the other side. So you said that your personal mission in crypto is separating the money from the state. So why do you think that is so important? Great question. So yeah, I think money should be separated from the state, which means that the institution of money, which is obviously so important, like we're all using it every day for everything, should not be centrally planned or controlled. And this is essentially a result of just feeling like markets handle goods and services better than central monopolies. I think most people agree with that to some extent, and yet they allow the most important good of all, which is money, to be centrally controlled by a monopoly. And there's a number of reasons why it should not be the case. One is a matter of economic efficiency, like what should the price of money be? That's a question for markets, not for politicians, not for banks to decide for us. There should not be like one price of money that is set by a group of figures in a building in Washington, DC. Like that sounds very Soviet to me. That does not sound like what the world's largest capitalist economy should have. And then the other is about censorship and control. And I think it would be a very scary world in which the money that you have can be censored, blocked, reversed, canceled, deleted, if you hold the wrong opinion. That's already the case in China, and if people are not careful, that is the direction which fiat currencies will go in the Western world. We are seeing that the Biden administration is apparently adopting a very tough stance on the crypto industry. Do you believe that there is a coordinated effort in the US to crack down on the crypto industry? It appears that there is some degree of coordination, especially in the last two, three months. Maybe as a result of the crazy blow-up of FTX last fall, the degree to which it's coordinated is hard to know, but all these agencies share a similar interest. So even if they're not actively coordinating with each other, it's reasonable that they would come to the same conclusions that they would start acting sort of in concert. And that is that cryptocurrency, blockchains, decentralized systems pull power and authority away from government and put it in the hands of people. So of course, people that work in the government are not going to be okay with losing that power, and they're going to work where they can to eliminate that change. You know, I'm a little surprised it took this long, but we're entering more of a, you know, than-they-fight-you kind of stage. I was talking to Corey Cribson from Swan Bitcoin a couple of days ago, a few days ago, and he was, we were discussing the situation in the US, and he was making a big difference between like how this crackdown is impacting crypto and how this crackdown is impacting Bitcoin. For him, this crackdown, in a way, it's benefiting Bitcoin because it's sort of affecting mostly everything else. So he sees everything else, except Bitcoin as a distraction. What is your view on this sort of maximalist Bitcoin business? Anyone who says that Bitcoin is not part of crypto is disingenuous and just technically full of nonsense. Like, obviously, these are similar systems existing in a similar space. They overlap, they have differences, but it's all crypto. And these maxis that try to distinguish Bitcoin from the rest of the industry, I mean, I guess it's good, it's a good rhetoric, but I don't know why, I don't know why it's helpful. Like, what's more helpful is to distinguish quality projects from non-quality projects. For example, the entire stablecoin market, which is this multi-billion dollar market that people are finding immense value in, superior to banks, not superior to Bitcoin, different than Bitcoin, but superior to banks, certainly, is all enabled by Ethereum. Like, Ethereum has allowed an immense amount of economic activity that Bitcoin hasn't been designed to and cannot and does not provide. These are wonderful complementary systems, and it's absurd for the maxis to try to throw everything under the bus and just focus on their one preferred protocol. It's partisan, it's tribalist. The one we are seeing now, they are fighting us moment. So, basically a moment where the government is not ignoring crypto anymore, it's not laughing at it anymore, but it's trying to recognize its potential to disrupt the establishment system, and that's why they are trying to fight it. So, would you say that this is the final showdown between crypto and the government, the moment where crypto needs to go through the maximum pressure in order to show that it's able to survive? We're definitely not at, like, the final moment or the final boss at all. Like, the fight is really just getting started. I don't actually think that many people in the government believe that crypto is a threat to fiat. I think the ones who are attacking it, largely see it as opportunistic. Like, they see it as sort of this scammy area where they can come in and look like the hero for cleaning up a mess. This is why the attention has been so much larger, you know, during a bear market and in the wake of all the blow-ups we had last year. When they start waking up to the fact that this stuff actually threatens fiat, actually threatens the banking system, I think the tone is going to be much more hostile. And so, we're in a race to make sure that the world understands why this is valuable and that enough of the world is comfortable in using it so that when the politicians do see the existential threat to fiat, it will be too late for them and people won't buy their arguments that this is some evil system because too many people are already used to it and they can see for themselves that it is valuable. A lot of people see DeFi as basically the antidote to CBDCs, that CBDCs are this sort of basically the quintessential example of how the government can really control money and so the antagonist basically have crypto and the strong point that they are probably going to offer to people is convenience so good user experience, simple and so on. So can DeFi compete with this? Can DeFi win this race for the hearts and minds of people? Yeah, I mean not only can it win it, it will win because of economic principles. So CBDCs are fiat. Fiat degrades in value over time because it's printed more and more and more. Bitcoin cannot be printed and so over the long term all else equal Bitcoin appreciates relative to fiat and the world will slowly learn what that feels like to save in an asset which is not debased continually. It will win even if only for that reason and there are more reasons than this, right? So like capital goes where friction is least. Capital does not like to be bound by borders. Capital does not like to be restricted in where it can move and when. Capital does not like to be frozen on a Sunday or on Christmas and in the crypto world capital moves freely, it moves effortlessly, it moves without restriction or friction. And so over time capital is going to flow through those channels which are the least restrictive. Just before I get to the final question I just wanted to drop there a provocative question. If you were the president of the United States what would be your first sort of approach to crypto? I would state categorically that Americans have a right to privacy. There's a right to privacy in their own homes. It's a right to privacy in their property and it's a right to privacy in their finances. And as such I would state categorically that surveillance of innocent people who haven't even been accused of a crime is unethical and should be illegal and that anyone that's building private financial systems should be applauded as a pro-American hero rather than as some evil terrorist. And I would state that loud and clear and I would expect my executive branch to follow through with policy in that line. You have to say that open and immutable code is what is going to bring us salvation. So you put a lot of hope in this concept of an open immutable code on which the financial system of the world will be based. This open immutable code is also a product of humans and therefore it's also prone to failures and so don't you think that relying entirely basing the entire financial system on this open immutable code that also creates a centralized point of failure because as soon as this code just fails then everything else crumbles. And don't you think that a government as a safe net that will act if the code fails it's still preferable than just having the code there. Well, there's not one code, right? Like, DeFi and crypto is not one code base. That would be dangerous. That would be centralized if there was just like if all the DeFi code for some reason was in like one code repo and acted in one way but that's not how it works. It's decentralized. You know, there are thousands of projects, tens, hundreds of thousands of developers writing these things, challenging each other all the time. It's highly adaptive and it gets resolved. So these things aren't perfect. Obviously there have been big bugs. There will be more in the future. But the difference with a market and with open source code is that the bugs can be seen ahead of time. And once fixed, you know, you get closer and closer to like mathematical truth and a principle of engineering. So like when people are building, you know, towers and buildings, they don't generally fall down. It's because humans have learned the engineering principles of how to build tall, large buildings in a very safe way. And that's an open system, right? Like the dynamics of how architecture works and engineering is not some closed secret knowledge. Everyone can use it and build on it and it's adapted with humans over time. Now we can do that with money. Like these open source financial protocols allow us to engineer money and people will make mistakes but we can get better and better over time. And that competition among these projects is really where the safety and the security comes from. Okay, I think that was a great note to close our conversation. Eric, it was super interesting to talk to you. Actually, I'm happy that you came to our channel. It was a long time since you were here last time. And yeah, hopefully we can talk again very soon. Yeah, thanks so much. It's been a good conversation.