Three reasons the Bitcoin community should be happy ShapeShift was hacked…

ShapeShift is a cryptocurrency exchange that requires no account, allowing users to easily shift currencies. On April 8, 2016 Erik Voorhees, CEO of the ShapeShift Bitcoin exchange announced the following:

So why should the Bitcoin community be happy about this?

Reason #1 — The absence of bullshit and cover up

I’ve helped companies deal with hundreds of incidents like this, and had to report massive hacks and insider attacks to CEO’s and board members. In my experience the management response often goes like this:

  • Fear — normal human response, perfectly understandable
  • Panic — it doesn’t always happen, it depends on the individual
  • Cover Up — happens when leadership is corrupt, and happens a lot

The time I’ve spent having to convince management teams to come clean and be open and honest about what happened is quite disturbing, and in this case I’m really happy to see Erik Voorhees respond appropriately.

On a logical level it might seem trivial, but when the lizard brain is in control and all it sees is “life and death” and all it cares about is it’s own “survival” it can be a really huge battle to tell the truth. Well done Erik.

Reason #2 — ShapeShift just proved it’s greatest strength

Given the length of time the service has been unavailable it’s obvious that appropriate steps weren’t taken to recover quickly from an attack like this, but what really matters is the “minimal impact” on users and the overall survivability of the ShapeShift exchange.

  • No accounts were compromised — because there aren’t any
  • No customer money at risk — because no balance is held
  • Catastrophic business failure avoided — by design

All these things are a true testament to the fact that ShapeShift doesn’t hold account balances, and by design doesn’t put customers at significant risk.

Reason #3 — It’s certain that ShapeShift will be back

ShapeShift clearly puts the customer first, unlike exchanges that have gone before it. It is a business with integrity that has sound leadership and a business model that I’m certain will become incredibly successful.

Thursday, April 14 @ 5:41 PM

We need more services in the cryptocurrency space that have the levels of honesty, integrity and leadership that Erik Voorhees exhibits.

I’m looking forward to seeing ShapeShift back online and I wish their team the best of luck. For the record neither myself or PatrolX has a relationship with ShapeShift, opinions are my own.

Article by:

Adam Sculthorpe, Co-Founder of PatrolX

PatrolX officially launches in June 2016, our proprietary solutions are tested and proven to help you discover ongoing breaches and misuse of customer data you don’t know about.

In R&D mode in the past six months we discovered several data exfiltrations and serious breaches carried out by trusted insiders. We’ll also be making this specialized service generally available when we launch in June 2016.