Five years ago the original ShapeShift launched to the world, processing its first customer transaction of Bitcoin into Litecoin. There was an origami elephant that moved across the screen denoting the order status.

It had been built and run pseudonymously; I went by the name Beorn, in an unsubtle reference to the shapeshifting bear in Lord of the Rings. Crypto harmonizes beautifully with that uncertain journey into darkness, that epic struggle against evil. In this metaphor, fiat currency is the One Ring, around which the evils of the world gather to defend, and otherwise good people are unwittingly corrupted into its service.

ShapeShift’s thesis was that digital assets would become an entirely new class, and that we were on the cusp of a Cambrian explosion in variety and purpose of blockchains as well as the tokens built upon them. The entire crypto market cap was under $5 billion. Many were skeptical of this thesis, yet today this figure has grown to over $300 billion.