ShapeShift chief and founder Erik Voorhees has disclosed in a recent podcast that he was mortified and repulsed by the behaviour exhibited by Bitcoin maxis, or maximalists, at the Bitcoin 2021 conference which took place in Miami.
A veteran Bitcoin supporter who is able to see merit in digital currencies, Voorhees happened to be speaking on a panel on day 2 of the conference held in June. The ShapeShift founder caused a commotion when he stated that he heard someone from the prior panel saying that if he was against “toxic maximalism”, he was actually not in favour of Bitcoin and “freedom”. He sarcastically remarked that such a remark was nonsense.
Voorhees happened to expand on those comments directed at him in an interview on Tuesday on the “Unchained Podcast”, hosted by reported Laura Shin. The thirty-five-year-old criticized Bitcoin supporters who hold the opinion that their display of toxic behaviour like tearing apart proponents of other digital currencies is beneficial for Bitcoin.
He also added that such people have let themselves think that criticizing these people Is a virtue and this toxic behaviour is helping Bitcoin, saying that he found the entire ordeal “disgusting” and that he felt embarrassed about it.
Voorhees then elaborated further, stating that such people were in favour of the benefits of toxic maximalism; he did not know when people like them became interested in Bitcoin as that was not the community he came from in Bitcoin.
Even before these recent events, Voorhees has spoken against toxic maximalism. He informed Shin that the Bitcoin conference this year was the first one he has attended where he felt embarrassed about the kind of people present there.
According to him, if there is a true rival against Bitcoin as well as Bitcoin maxis, that enemy is banking, national banks, and paper currency, not the Dogecoin or Ethereum community.
Voorhees’ company Shapeshift is a non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange platform that operates out of Denver, its headquarters present in Switzerland. The platform revealed a complete integration with THORChain, a decentralized blockchain, earlier in April. This allowed the direct trade of Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. THORChain, however, has endured breaches worth several million dollars from hackers in the current month, not to mention another more minor breach.
According to reports on the 16th of July that THORChain had ceased after a hacker took crypto assets with 7.6 million USD. Another hacker also happened to steal 8 million USD worth of Ethereum.
