Ethos Joining Voyager — Building the Broker that Crypto Deserves

I knew from the first day that I discovered crypto that there was a truly revolutionary “Ethos” behind it. Much of the inequality and strife that occurs in the world is economically driven. We’ve seen time and time again that those with more have had unfair access and control than those with less.

Seen in examples throughout history such as the third-world debt crisis, where countries (and indirectly people) were saddled with national debt and forced into IMF austerity measures, or in 2008 where the average person was forced to pay for the mistakes of institutions that were “too big to fail.” Before crypto, there was something wrong and unfair about how the financial system was set up. Profit was centralized where risk is socialized.

Each day we see headlines about the economic disparity around the Globe, gross mismanagement of funds by governments, the effects of hyperinflation leaving millions without affordable housing and the majority of the World living on less than $2 a day. Economic inequality and unfairness is a rampant epidemic, which will only be displaced by new innovative systems and organizations, who not only care but are willing to invest and build technology which benefits users around the World at scale.

Crypto offered a solution to that. Crypto made people ask fundamental questions about controlling their money, challenging the financial status quo and questioning the very nature of “value,” which for so many years withheld individuals from the livelihood that they deserved. Crypto offered something better–a way where technology could succeed where the system failed. This spark of a revolution that crypto offered took hold in me and drove me towards starting Ethos.

Creating a Service in Line with the Ethos of Crypto

I knew that we had a difficult task ahead of us. It was a tall order to reimagine the financial ecosystem as one that was open, safe and fair for everyone and to bring the ideas and philosophies of crypto to the masses in order to challenge the status quo. We’ve made great strides towards this vision, but to onboard individuals into the New Economy, you first had to integrate with the existing one. Enter Voyager.

Voyager is building a crypto brokerage business that executes orders across multiple exchanges in order to achieve superior execution. Voyager, like Ethos, is looking to make the crypto markets more accessible to the average person by connecting directly into the existing financial system while simultaneously offering best-execution saving users time and money. When we looked across the industry for a partner that lined up with our technology and philosophy and couldn’t find any better fit than we did with Voyager.

This is why I’m excited to be announcing that Ethos, along with the talented Ethos team, will be joining forces with Voyager to build the broker that crypto not only needs, but deserves. We are looking to build a product together that offers the best possible experience in line with the values and philosophy that crypto, and Ethos, was founded on.

I will be joining the Voyager board of directors and management team as Chief Innovation Officer. As Chief Innovation Officer, I will be joining a team of accomplished leaders including Oscar Salazar (Founding CTO of Uber) and Steve Ehrlich (E*TRADE Executive and CEO of Lightspeed Financial) where we will be responsible for setting the technical and philosophical compass of the organization. Ethos and Voyager have the opportunity to disrupt the status quo not just for crypto users, but for financial services through the transformative power of crypto.

An Exciting and Unique Vision

By putting the best of Ethos and Voyager together, our vision is to build the best place to buy, sell, store and use your digital assets. For the crypto newbie or blockchain veteran, we are building the crypto broker that delivers the easiest and most trusted crypto trading experience for everyone through commission-free access to the entire market, saving you money and improving the price on every trade.

This includes a digital asset clearing system powered by Ethos Bedrock–the very same piece of technology that powers the Ethos Universal Wallet today. By combining Ethos Bedrock with the Voyager Smart Router, we will be creating a unique solution that offers dynamic clearing, best execution and physical delivery of digital assets. Building together with Voyager’s existing gateway, KYC and execution system also allows us to build for scale.

I’m excited for the future of the combined firm as the organization is now uniquely positioned to execute and build a powerful financial ecosystem that can offer a wide variety of blockchain-based financial services like margin, lending, debit cards, payments and much more.

We envision all of these products being wrapped up into a service that offers an end-to-end solution for organizations that want to offer blockchain financial services to their clients. We see trading, crypto clearing, payments and more under one easy and accessible API that democratizes access to crypto markets and blockchain networks.

The ETHOS token will be integrated into the Voyager/Ethos ecosystem through additional features such as cashbacks and rewards with functionality growing hand-in-hand with the ecosystem. Some additional reading for those who are interested can be found here:

Voyager x Ethos Cashbacks: https://www.ethos.io/ethos-introduces-cashback-rewards-for-token-holders-trading-with-voyager

Voyager Joining Ethos — Message to the Community: https://medium.com/ethos-io/ethos-joining-forces-voyager-a-message-to-the-community-43d4a0e20c4b

Taking the Next Step

In this new and exciting chapter, I’ll be taking the next step with Voyager to build the crypto broker of the future. We will be creating an end-to-end crypto solution for both individuals and institutions, with every intention to usher in crypto mass adoption.

The future is for everyone.

Thank You,

Shingo Lavine
Founder & CEO, Ethos.io
Chief Innovation Officer, Voyager Digital