Halsey Minor, the force behind both Voxelus and Uphold, quickly corrected a fundamental misconception I held about his game-building platform. My previous coverage had drawn parallels to established g
Halsey Minor, the force behind both Voxelus and Uphold, quickly corrected a fundamental misconception I held about his game-building platform. My previous coverage had drawn parallels to established game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine, but that comparison fundamentally missed the mark. Voxelus actually runs on top of Unity—it's the accessible layer built for creators who lack programming expertise. If anything resembles Voxelus, it might be Minecraft, though that comparison also falls short. Think of it as a cryptocurrency-integrated virtual reality world-building sandbox, turbocharged with a native marketplace where creators monetize their output. This positioning suggests genuine promise, particularly given how altcoins have long sought to establish themselves in specialized domains with their own economies.
The cryptocurrency space has seen countless coins attempt to carve out distinct purposes. A few gaming-focused experiments, like HYPER in the esports betting sphere, have gained modest traction. Most alternatives, however, remain essentially Bitcoin proxies—requiring conversion to the dominant cryptocurrency before accessing fiat markets, offering little practical advantage over Bitcoin itself. Decentralized asset platforms running on CounterParty, NXT, and Ethereum possess real potential, with Ethereum's recent breakthroughs standing out. Yet these competing platforms effectively target identical territory. Beyond that narrow strip, the vast majority of alternative coins function merely as stepping stones toward Bitcoin conversion.
Voxelus and its native currency, the Voxel, represent something structurally different. The system operates as both a creation tool and a marketplace simultaneously. Players build content and exchange it for Voxels, which simultaneously function as in-game currency. Minor describes Voxelus as "the most mature" VR application available—ambitious language when EVE: Valkyrie already delivers AAA-tier VR experiences to gamers, though there's validity to the claim should Minor's promises materialize. The technical sophistication being promised would rival anything currently in development.
Minecraft demonstrated how user ingenuity transcends developer imagination. The community transformed Redstone mechanics into gaming experiences Markus "Notch" Persson never envisioned, and mods multiplied those possibilities exponentially. Still, Minecraft imposes constraints. Its blocky aesthetic limits stylistic range, and while mods partially address this, players remain confined within certain structural boundaries. Voxelus positions itself as the middle ground between Unity's steepness and Minecraft's simplicity—enabling racing games, shooters, soccer simulations, rendered realistically or cartoonishly according to creator preference.
Other altcoins pursuing currency status within specialized marketplaces face formidable obstacles. Convincing non-Bitcoin users to enter your ecosystem requires them traversing a gauntlet: acquiring Bitcoin first, trading it for your token, then finally purchasing from your marketplace. Voxel sidesteps this friction through integration with Uphold, Minor's parallel venture. Uphold, previously operating as Bitreserve, maintains relationships with traditional financial institutions across Europe and North America. The platform facilitates holding wealth in Bitcoin, commodities, or over two dozen fiat currencies. Users can purchase these assets via credit card, wire transfer, or bank deposit, with corresponding withdrawal methods available. A forthcoming debit card will handle foreign exchange conversions without fees, functioning across most retailers and ATM networks globally.
Beyond Voxelus proper, Uphold alone grants Voxel capabilities exceeding what most altcoins deliver. The currency gains instant fiat convertibility and Bitcoin liquidity through this infrastructure. The debit card integration means immediate real-world utility.
Endorsing specific currencies or predicting price movements falls outside appropriate journalism, and frankly, I lack the competency for speculative pronouncements. The altcoin graveyard overflows with projects boasting tremendous potential that nonetheless withered. Yet across my years reporting on cryptocurrency, I've encountered nothing comparable to this combination of institutional backing and functional depth at launch. Community skepticism is understandable—so many coins promise everything. Still, my conversation with Minor produced genuine conviction that Voxelus warrants attention.
Minor spoke with me about Voxelus, Uphold, and the broader cryptocurrency landscape. He possessed an uncanny ability to anticipate my questions, answering before I could ask them, which occasionally resulted in lengthier responses than the questions themselves seemed to demand. That said, the depth proves worthwhile.
**Ian DeMartino: How's the crowdsale progressing? Are you tracking toward your targets?**
**Halsey Minor:** Things are moving quite well, actually. We're navigating some turbulence—Bitcoin's volatility has created some momentum fluctuations, periods of slowdown balanced by acceleration. The reason I committed to building Voxel and Uphold stems from a broader conviction: we're transitioning into a paradigm where currencies become chosen rather than inherited. I was born into dollars, but I'm opting into Voxel instead. Traditional currencies remain geographically tethered. Cryptocurrencies transcend that limitation elegantly. With Voxel, we created an in-game currency designed to function meaningfully outside gaming contexts. Imagine accumulating game currency, then converting it to Euros, dollars, or loading it directly onto a debit card.
Many cryptocurrency crowdsales prioritize the token sale event itself. Our approach inverts that—we're building an ecosystem where the currency drives engagement and rewards participation. Scaling up, we're demonstrating that new forms of value can be created, subdivided across any other value type, and remain spendable on physical debit cards or transferable into banking systems worldwide, with US banking integration following European implementation. Voxel holdings within Uphold accounts function identically to our other 24 supported currencies plus Bitcoin. This reflects Uphold's founding principle: seamless value conversion between any formats at minimal cost.
Picture this absurdly: if we possessed sufficient chickens, we could have chicken-denominated money. In-game currencies now fill that role. Voxel enables this—people possessing in-game currency achieve real value conversion capacity. Post-crowdsale, we're enabling in-game Voxel purchasing as the native payment system. Simultaneously, Uphold treats Voxel as a 25th currency, convertible into all other supported options, precious metals included. Outside conversion periods, holding Voxel costs nothing. Users can allocate funds entirely to Voxel, then migrate into whichever form they prefer—Bitcoin, dollars, Voxels, airline miles.
Our underlying goal prioritizes flexibility. Whether someone feels most comfortable storing value as Bitcoin, dollars, Voxels, or alternative forms, that preference should be costless and instant. A personal debit card loaded entirely with airline miles—that demonstrates how people willingly hold alternative value representations. Through cloud infrastructure, we're building systems accommodating any value form and bridging any financial system—exchanges, banks, whatever exists.
Concretely, within weeks, US users will connect bank deposits to Uphold, purchasing Bitcoin at zero fees with next-day delivery while maintaining zero-fee internal transfers. We're simultaneously lowering Bitcoin's entry barriers. Withdrawing outside our network costs 0.50%—lower than Coinbase—but internal transactions stay completely free.
Voxel showcases alternative currencies' real potential. The content marketplace will generate real-world Voxel utility. Value manifests across countless forms—coupons, airline miles, gift cards, reward points. Cloud infrastructure serves as the conversion mechanism enabling flexibility. Bitcoin pioneered cloud-based money, introducing banking flexibility and instant transfers. We're building forward from that foundation. Voxel demonstrates how in-game currency achieves dollar-equivalent capabilities. This applies equally to Bitcoin.
Once debit cards launch, acquire one immediately. You'll possess the world's sole debit card offering zero foreign exchange premiums. Hold dollars, travel to Europe, and Uphold absorbs all conversion fees. The customer pays nothing. Voxel's genuine significance transcends its crowdsale—it's generating ecosystem value through content rewards. Our target: Disney and Lucasfilm licensing content on our infrastructure, generating revenue while enabling creators to monetize community-built derivatives. Brand owners distribute content; individual creators build variations, earning Voxels for contributions.
**DeMartino: That echoes something Giyom Lebleu mentioned about gift cards potentially functioning as independent currencies—imagine Coca-Cola issuing branded coins, operating like gift cards but usable everywhere.**
**Minor:** That's quite plausible. Today people inherit currencies. I use dollars through birth circumstances. We're engineering choice. Apple gift cards essentially represent Apple currency; Amazon gift cards represent Amazon currency. Our mission involves simplifying entry and exit mechanics, providing genuine liquidity. That was Uphold's founding principle—whatever value forms people prefer, they should access and transfer them simply and inexpensively.
The chicken analogy applies. With adequate chickens and liquidity for buying and selling chickens, we could establish chicken cards. The Oil Card represents our current focus. If people could store wealth in oil form—a major, variable expense for many—that proves considerably more valuable than gold holdings, which constitute significant costs for most. Value storage becomes remarkably fluid. Should people prefer Coca-Cola denomination, that reflects genuine conviction in that currency's worth. We're transitioning from geography-determined currencies toward domain-specific ones.
If Voxel reaches 300 million users—entirely realistic for a major VR game within three to five years—the user base rivals the entire United States population. Trading that volume, what substantively differentiates it from the dollar? Currently, dollars purchase more goods. But that generates markets.
I've long championed "use it or lose it" cryptocurrency philosophy—hoarding undermines currency fundamentals since utility depends on transaction capability. Voxel value fluctuates according to platform demand and participation levels, though holders won't accumulate it like Bitcoin. Voxel represents a genuine platform—arguably already qualifying as a premier VR option. Nothing prevents continued growth as VR itself expands. The gaming world has embraced Minecraft's approach; Voxel enables creating whatever game varieties exist, with appropriate content packs for each.
**DeMartino: Shifting focus—can the engine itself compete with Unity, Unreal, and comparable development platforms?**
**Minor:** It's built on Unity. Unity targets developers. We're competing with Minecraft instead. Minecraft's limitation is aesthetic homogeneity. You construct and share worlds, but Voxel differs fundamentally—it's entirely open with distinct content packs. Zombie pack, city pack, village pack—possibilities expand dramatically. Gameplay becomes customizable. Capture-the-flag variations, shooter modes, gravity and physics alterations, complex switch mechanics—all possible. We anticipate 20% of users creating for the remaining 80%, with perhaps 1-2% of creators producing genuinely exceptional content—the individuals wanting monetization.
A massive gulf separates Minecraft world-builders from Unity developers. Our objective: deliver an incredibly powerful engine eight-year-olds operate, enabling them creating worlds and inviting friends to play within. My own experience exemplifies this—I constructed a world collaboratively with someone in Argentina, joined it myself, and we spawned five players simultaneously in our collaborative creation. Extraordinary.
We're completing the frontend. Samsung launches a $99 VR device imminently, Oculus has releases scheduled, and HTC Vive arrives soon. Minecraft proved user-generated worlds constitute a viable gaming category. Voxel enables creation followed by play—VR currently lacks mature control interfaces, with hand-controller options remaining underdeveloped. We predict tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of games by next year's conclusion. Content sophistication will expand as hardware capabilities increase. Imagine accessing Star Wars packs, Fast and Furious packs, building derivative content. Possibilities become essentially unlimited. Creators monetize in Voxels, converting to Bitcoin or dollars afterward.
**DeMartino: With Unity as your foundation, could users import Unity Asset Store purchases into Voxelus?**
**Minor:** We've established relationships with suppliers possessing hundreds of thousands of readily available items. Yes, technically it's possible. We're finalizing the asset upload mechanism. Multiple existing marketplaces contain hundreds of thousands of objects themselves—users will purchase and integrate items into Voxelus worlds. The infrastructure exists should creators need it.
**DeMartino: What platform support are you targeting? Obviously Oculus, but what about Vive, GearVR, and Google Cardboard?**
**Minor:** Everything. Voxelus currently represents the most mature VR application available. PC and Mac support launching with iOS support incoming. Viewers work on PC, Samsung Viewer, with future Google Cardboard support. Mac viewer support ended since Oculus discontinued Mac compatibility. Currently we fully support the two dominant platforms—GearVR and Oculus.
**DeMartino: Unity probably facilitates that portability?**
**Minor:** Absolutely. It's not seamless, but Unity enables remarkably rapid cross-platform transitions.
**DeMartino: How flexible is the toolset? Can sophisticated creators inject custom code, or does it remain constrained within predetermined variables?**
**Minor:** You can't implement custom code. Considerable building capacity exists regardless. Numerous control mechanisms—gravity settings, triggers, complex systems—enable substantial content variation. I was contemplating this recently. High-resolution games require performance that these platforms' GPUs simply can't deliver presently. Real capability expansion will track alongside platform power increases. We'll capture market share from established games because users can construct custom worlds and iterations become progressively complex while sharing with friends.
Minecraft represented gaming's watershed moment—proving players desire world and game creation agency. We're extending that into VR. Nobody's funding 30-million-dollar VR games immediately. Success requires advance validation before massive investment. We won't compete with major studios developing VR-specific titles because the economics don't exist yet. Our strategy recognizes that licensing Star Wars content to Voxelus proves economically superior to funding 30-million-dollar games independently. Rather than engineering complete games, companies license content, enabling community testing while observing outcomes instead of maximum-stakes gambles during industry infancy.
AAA content largely won't migrate into purpose-built VR games initially. Instead, you'll witness platform-distributed content because communities will organically determine what works. VR gaming differs fundamentally—friends collaborating in self-created worlds present unique considerations. We'll function as the stopgap—and substantially more—between zero VR participation and entirely custom game development.
Our approach inverts television's trajectory. Television initiated with expensive content using expensive equipment. Affordable cameras took roughly forty years appearing; people watched three channels exclusively. Sixty years later, individuals recorded video on smartphones. The long tail materialized—professionals first, then amateurs comprising growth. VR inverts this. The long tail begins immediately—thousands of creators generating content, gradually revealing what succeeds before studios invest 30 million dollars into soccer games. We'll host abundant content: racing competitions, sports simulations—all available as content packs. Eventually someone funds that massive soccer game investment, but meanwhile, Voxelus already offers soccer available now.
Major VR titles probably require several years appearing. Throughout that interval, communities populate the content landscape. People race vehicles, play competitive games—everything exists as content packs. Eventually corporations will finance those massive investments; our platform provides interim entertainment.
**DeMartino: We've observed this somewhat. Facebook acquired Oculus previously and will finance AAA projects, though outside a couple exceptions, development has centered on demos and indie ventures.**
**Minor:** We're actively discussing partnerships with established content brands. Announcement timing isn't appropriate currently, but expect significant platform presence next year. It's tremendously profitable and educational—avoiding 20-million-dollar title commitments entirely. We'll gain real scale first, generating enormous content through community contributions. Subsequently, established game developers examine what's commercially viable on our platform, creating specialized versions based on demonstrated demand. The long tail occurs initially, guiding strategic development decisions.
**DeMartino: Does that mirror 1990s-2000s internet gaming? Community-generated mods eventually became legitimate releases—Counter-Strike's trajectory?**
**Minor:** Precisely. We're like mods taken to extremes. Modding constitutes the model, resembling Minecraft modifications. Rather than discovering external mods, everything becomes a mod. The game itself is the mod. We're generating initial content; once the upload system completes, creators will generate custom objects for marketplace sales. Mods represent the use case, not exceptions. We're currently recruiting 25 exceptionally crafted worlds—once available, users will clone them and construct variants.
**DeMartino: Could the store function as a crypto-powered Unity Asset Store alternative? Could people purchase items in Voxelus for alternative projects, perhaps unavailable through Unity's store, or preferring cryptocurrency transactions?**
**Minor:** We concentrate on our ecosystem specifically. Someone globally can engineer a game; another individual modifies it elsewhere through cloud systems. That drives innovation and content production.
**DeMartino: Final question—returning to Uphold, you mentioned the Oil Card earlier. What's the timeline?**
**Minor:** It's genuinely challenging. Development continues. I consider this the most important alternative currency card because for countless people, energy represents major, variable expenses. It's a substantial cost component, so development continues. Honestly, it's proven approximately as difficult as anything I've undertook. Timing remains uncertain.
We appreciate Halsey Minor's participation. Voxelus' crowdsale continues at 800 Voxels per Bitcoin according to schedule. Additional Voxelus information and crowdsale details are available through their website. Viewers and creator tools can be accessed through their distribution channels.
