ShapeShift
Categories: Econ
After Professor McGonagall shapeshifts back into a cat for the evening, one of her favorite things to do is catch up on the day’s happenings in the cryptocurrency world. Little-known fact: the professor is a big cryptocurrency fan. She doesn’t always exchange one cryptocurrency for another, but when she does, she uses ShapeShift. For obvious reasons.
So what’s “ShapeShift?” It’s one of a handful of cryptocurrency exchange platforms that (a) requires minimal personal info to set up an account, and (b) doesn’t deal with fiat currencies. It’s strictly for changing one cryptocurrency into another.
Got some Bitcoin but really want some Dogecoin? ShapeShift. Got some Ethereum but really got a hankering for some Litecoin? ShapeShift. The platform was created and is headquartered in Switzerland, but its base of operations is in Denver, CO, which is super close to Switzerland, so, uh...we can see why they did that. Anyway, the whole idea behind ShapeShift is that crypto owners can go to one place, see all the exchange info for a variety of different cryptocurrencies, and then easily and quickly swap what they’ve got for what they want (for a fee), without having to worry about such pesky details as whether or not that particular crypto is legal where they live. So...that’s super handy.
ShapeShift has only been around since 2014 and been operational since 2015. But it’s managed to pack a lot of controversy and mixed reviews into its short existence. For instance, in 2018, the Wall Street Journal said that the company had handled over $9 billion worth of criminal transactions in just two short years. That raised a few brows, but also unsettling is the fact that the company has been the victim of more than one cyber-robbery; they even had to take the service completely offline for a while to deal with their security issues. And though the company says anyone can conduct exchanges on its platform, there are certain states where the laws don’t let them operate (Washington and New York are two of them). But ShapeShift users seem to like using the service, other than the ones who say the entire company is just one huge scam (but hey, can’t please everybody).
As for us, we’re just thrilled with the fact that the ShapeShift website features professional photos of its leadership team members posing in front of a painting of a stylized wolf. Because really, nothing inspires confidence like stylized wolves.
