Cross-chain liquidity protocol THORChain has fully recovered from two summer exploits that compromised millions of dollars in user funds after the company announced Thursday that it had received passing grades in a new security audit. The simultaneous audits, which were carried out by cybersecurity companies Trail and Bits and Halborn, allowed THORChain to implement a five-step recovery plan. THORChain’s contributors now say the protocol is fully operational after a restart brought all the major cryptocurrency integrations and cross-chain trading features back online. In addition to the audit, THORChain announced that it has commissioned Immunefi, a leading bug bounty platform for …

Non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift has completed its second airdrop of FOX tokens — dubbed “fairdrop” — as part of a broad decentralization pledge that was first announced in July. The airdrop of 6,613,000 FOX tokens was distributed to over 33,000 DAO community members, ShapeShift announced Tuesday. These holders were previously ineligible for the airdrop reward because their tokens were locked in staking or liquidity operations. A proposal to amend the token distribution process to include DAO community members was submitted on Sept. 16, receiving overwhelming support. As Cointelegraph reported, ShapeShift airdropped 340 million FOX tokens to over one million users …

As part of its ongoing decentralization efforts, non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift announced Thursday that it has open-sourced the code of its upcoming version two platform, giving developers the opportunity to contribute to the iteration process. ShapeShift’s v2 code repository is now available on Github, making it easier for developers to download it to their local drives. “This is a great step in our ongoing efforts to open source and involve the community in iterating on the first comprehensive, multichain, community-built interface,” said Josh Foreman, engineering workstream lead for ShapeShift DAO. The company also announced that open-source developers can attend biweekly …

ShapeShift, a leading non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange, is planning to open-source its platform and dissolve its entire corporate structure — an unprecedented move that underscores the company’s commitment to decentralization. Largest airdrop in history As part of its decentralization pledge, ShapeShift plans to airdrop 340 million FOX tokens to over one million users who traded $1 or more of Ether (ETH) or any ERC-20 token through the platform prior to June 9, 2021. Both current and past users of ShapeShift are eligible to receive the airdrop. The breakdown of the FOX token distribution is as follows: 1-4 trades: 200 FOX 5-9 …

ShapeShift, a cryptocurrency exchange based in Switzerland, has announced full integration with THORChain, enabling direct trading of Bitcoin (BTC) with Ether (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC). As of Tuesday, ShapeShift’s mobile users have the ability to make cross-chain swaps without the use of an intermediary, custodian or counterparty of any kind. This capability will be extended to ShapeShift’s web-based platform in the coming weeks. Erik Voorhees, ShapeShift’s founder and CEO, explained the importance of the THORChain integration: “We believe finance must be open and immutable. The THORChain team has built technology that brings these properties to the trading of bitcoin and …

Institutional investors will play an important role in securing the future of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), according to Erik Voorhees, CEO and founder of ShapeShift. In a panel discussion at this year’s LaBitConf, Voorhees said Bitcoin’s adoption curve will grow substantially over the next five to 10 years. In that time, Voorhees estimated that half the world could have exposure to BTC. He believes that mass adoption will occur much later, however, once Bitcoin becomes the global monetary standard. The panel was virtually unanimous in the view that Bitcoin is better served with entities of different persuasions buying and holding …

Shapeshift CEO Erik Voorhees has drawn a metaphorical line in the financial sand, stating that every asset manager should understand Bitcoin now based on its astonishing rate of return. Voorhees made the comments while retweeting data shared by analytics platform Messari co-founder Dan McArdle that shows Bitcoin has dramatically outperformed everything over the last decade. While gold has returned a 32% profit and the S&P 500 has tripled investors’ money, Bitcoin has posted an incredible 7,837,884% gain in ten years. Looking across its 10-year life, Voorhees believes Bitcoin is “vastly superior to any other investment.” He said that: “One could …

Blockchain analytics platform BlockSeer has launched the private beta version of a new Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool — Blockseer Mining Pool — that censors transactions from blacklisted wallets. The pool will use BlockSeer and Walletscore’s labeling data, among other verified sources such as the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, blacklist for crypto to identify BTC transactions it does not wish to process. The pool also requires all miners to pass Know-Your-Customer protocols. DMG’s chief operating officer, Sheldon Bennett, stated: “The pool is focused on being devoid of transactions from known nefarious wallets which use this medium …

Non fungible tokens (NFT) representing diamonds have made their way to the OpenSea marketplace. In the past, there have been quite a few attempts to tokenize diamonds and other precious stones and metals. But Icecap founder and CEO Jacques Voorhees says the problem with previous attempts was they treated diamonds as fungible commodities, which they are not. He told Cointelegraph that when he first heard about NFTs from his son Erik Voorhees (CEO of ShapeShift), it all came together. “They're as different as a snowflake,” he said. “All the efforts to try to create fungibility with a non fungible item, …

Switzerland-based crypto exchange ShapeShift has launched zero-fee trading and its loyalty token FOX. ShapeShift founder and CEO Erik Voorhees announced the news on Twitter Nov. 20, noting that zero-commission trading on the platform is enabled by the newly released FOX token. According to the executive, zero-fee trading solves two major problems of non-custodial exchanges — illiquidity and high price of services. In order to trade at a zero-fee rate, ShapeShift customers will have to hold the Ethereum-based ERC-20 FOX tokens, Voorhees explained, stating: “The model is simple: hold FOX & you trade at a 0% commission rate. If not, you …

Switzerland-based crypto exchange ShapeShift has launched its new non-custodial crypto platform operating across multiple blockchains, the firm announced in a press release shared with Cointelegraph on July 8. The new ShapeShift platform offers an integrated suite for digital asset management, enabling an end-to-end tool for secure storing, buying, selling, trading, and tracking cryptos, the company stated. The platform supports 50 cryptocurrencies including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and litecoin (LTC), ShapeShift noted, adding that it is targeting common international traders instead of institutional investors. As such, ShapeShift platform’s users can now integrate with the platform using their hardware wallets such as …

The CEO of instant cryptocurrency exchange platform ShapeShift told Bloomberg TV on May 15 that bubbles are an essential part of the industry’s growth. Speaking in an interview, Erik Voorhees argued that the volatility seen in bitcoin (BTC) and altcoin markets over the years is a necessary phenomenon for a nascent asset. “There have to be bubbles in crypto because crypto is taking over the world, and it’s not just going to advance 5% per month without end,” he told the network. He then added: “If it did that, people would start buying it up and frontrunning it and turning …