The company fired back with information about their blockchain transactions and how the report was presented inaccurately.
ShapeShift responded to the claims with an article called ‘Shining light on the WSJ‘s attack on ShapeShift & Crypto‘ and explained in detail the exchange‘s operations. According to the report, the accusations were factually incorrect and were ment to deceive the public.
Wall Street Journal‘s rewport ‘How Dirty Money Disappears Into the Black Hole of Cryptocurrency‘ claimed that the company processed 9 million dollars out of 88 million dollars. It went further to analyze two years worth of blockchain data.
Erik Voorhees, CEO of ShapeShift, announced that the exchange platform has been working with Wall Street Journal for five months and tried to facilitate their needs but the journalists did not include their conversations in the material. Instead, they formulated the article with out-of-context conclusions.
ShapeShift added that has been continuously complying with law-enforcement requests and has worked with other exchanges to find and terminate block thieves. Also, the company has designed an advanced anti-money laundering program, and all suspicious addresses are immediately blocked.
The WSJ report excluded that information and instead blamed ShapeShift of giving a platform to criminals. The exchange is non-custodial and does not allow crypto-to-fiat transactions. A key priority is users‘ privacy, and yet all transactions are traceable which is a unique model that the company has developed.
According to ShapeShift, the reporters did not have an accurate understanding of how blockchains operate, and could not present the information correctly. The article addressed some of the charges by giving examples. One claim the WSJ report made was of an alleged 70,000 dollars laundered which did not happen.
The exchange platform operates with legal counsel for years in the US. And Switzerland. An anti-money laundering compliance firm is inspecting all the transactions, and they have a Chief Legal Officer with 20 years of experience in law firms. Blacklisted addresses are monitored carefully to prevent illicit activities, and mandatory KYC is required for all users.
The WSJ‘s article pictured ShapeShift as a company with no values that shows negligence, and is fine with allowing money laundering. The goal of ShapeShift is to create an advanced financial system which is continuously complying with the law, even when, in some cases, they may be conflicting and ineffective.
Erik Voorhees finished the statement with a suggestion to WSJ to put a more accurate title, such as ‘Less than two-tenths of one percent of ShapeShift‘s business might be illicit.‘