The head of ShapeShift trading platform, Erik Voorhees, denied the accusation that money could have been laundered through the site. This information appeared earlier in the investigation of The Wall Street Journal.
A denial was published on the ShapeShift website. Voorhees said that the journalists did not understand the principles of how crypto exchanges operated and made a lot of mistakes.
According to him, the site has been cooperating with the WSJ for almost half a year, but the publication did not include the information that ShapeShift helped to investigate 30 crimes with cryptocurrency in 13 countries. He added that it is basically impossible to launder money through his platform since it does not store assets, does not work with fiat, and the data on each transaction is tracked.
”We have an internal anti-money laundering program that uses blockchain forensics that are far more advanced (and we would argue, effective) than asking someone for their ’name and address’”, — The CEO of Shapeshift stated in his publication.
According to Voorhees, WSJ journalists appealed to the platform’s administration with questions about five months ago, and back then nobody has informed Shapeshift that the article would be on money laundering.
The article was published in the WSJ on September 28. It states that in two years $9 million was laundered through ShapeShift. “$9m (even if it was true) is 0.15% of ShapeShift’s exchange volume“, says Voorhees.
He also accused the authors of the publication that they collected information on suspicious transactions instead of notifying crypto exchanges.
”It is likely victims of these thefts lost their chance to recoup some of the funds due to this opportunism”, — the CEO of Shapeshift added.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
- Suspicions of money laundering can pull the platform to the bottom: if they are confirmed, many jurisdictions will stop working with ShapeShift.
- Such facts can cause tightening cryptocurrency laws: countries with unfriendly policies on digital assets justify their attitude by fears of terrorist financing and money laundering. The WSJ material states that in just the past two years, about $89 million was laundered through various platforms.
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