Voorhees takes Bankman-Fried to task for wanting federal oversight of crypto

Table of Contents

• Opinion

Erik Voorhees, founder and CEO of open-source crypto platform Shapeshift, advised Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto exchange FTX, not to allow the sector to become entangled in the perverse and deeply corrupted legacy system.

Sam Bankman-Fried, entrepreneur CEO of one of the largest crypto exchanges, replied to a Twitter follower over the weekend, who asked where he stood regarding whether he thought many tokens were securities.

Bankman Fried replied to the question by stating that some were and some weren’t, and that the SEC would enforce those that were, while the CFTC would take those that weren’t. He also stated his view that “in the end I want federal oversight of crypto one way or another”.

This statement was obviously not well-taken by Voorhees, who replied to Bankman-Fried saying that this was the direction towards banking 2.0 instead of a meaningful change in the system on how money and finance work, and he asked Bankman-Fried to “please avoid this impetus.”

Voorhees added to his tweet with another, saying:

Opinion

It may well be that Sam Bankman-Fried is just playing the game as far as his statements on regulation go. It must be acknowledged that he has to tread carefully with the regulators given that his empire is now so big, and he has to treat compliance with the utmost respect if his companies are allowed to proceed further.

Voorhees may be in a better position to be able to call the system and its regulators out for what they really are. He knows that there is a real danger that crypto becomes “enmeshed” in the legacy system, but that a tightrope has to be walked in order to push out the frontiers of private digital assets, while at the same time kowtow to the banks, and the regulators that carry out their bidding.

The recent announcement by Voorhees that Shapeshift is decentralising is obviously an attempt to take his company out of the clutches of the regulators and to be able to achieve what is in his view the most important principle of crypto - “self sovereignty over money.”

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.