Reggie Middleton On The Veritaseum Hack

In a conversation with ETHNews, CEO and founder of Veritaseum Reggie Middleton disclosed the facts about the alleged hack on the platform as well as news on some of Veritaseum’s future developments.

On July 23, 2017, around 9:00 a.m. ET, developers at Veritaseum noticed a gradual attack; Veritas (VERI) tokens were being funneled to an unknown wallet.

The team took immediate steps to lock down its end, according to CEO and founder of Veritaseum Reggie Middleton. In conversation, he told ETHNews, "It's actually a small bump in the road." Middleton said his team knows how the hack took place and has taken measures to prevent it from happening in the future. Without going into explicit detail, he expressed that some of his partners (unnamed corporate third parties) may be liable for the susceptibility.

Middleton expressed that he believes the person who stole from Veritaseum "made a very bad financial decision, outside of breaking the law." He went on to speculate that if the hacker had simply invested in the crowdsale, that the long term gains would outweigh the short ones from theft.

"The value is in holding. [The hacker] literally would have probably been better taking some capital, and simply buying it and holding on to it for a couple of years [rather] than stealing and then trying to dump. Mathematically, this time next year, I'm pretty sure I can prove it; one of the very few [circumstances] where doing the right thing pays off better than thieving."
In all, the amount stolen from Veritaseum was very small in comparison to the tokens in circulation, according to Middleton. "I think he got .06 percent of the tokens, which is not a lot. In 15 hours we had made a full round trip to the 24 – 48-hour average. Most people missed the entire thing because they were asleep." Middleton said that even if the hacker had taken a larger share of tokens, it would have been possible to preserve investor interests by simply forking to a different ERC20 token.

Middleton maintains Veritaseum has been number one in market cap for weeks. He expressed a bit of surprise that despite those figures, no major central exchanges are trading the tokens. Part of this, Middleton suggested, comes from what he describes as a misunderstanding of what Veritaseum does. He spoke of a misconception that Veritaseum is a software developer, when in fact it is a financial consultant and advisory service that uses an economic platform software to distribute its wares.

"We're not selling investment. We're actually selling utility software, and I've went out of my way to prove it with the Jamaica stock exchange deal," said Middleton. Veritaseum brokered a joint venture with the Jamaican Stock Exchange on June 29, 2017. Middleton said the Jamaica deal sets a precedent in the industry. The exchange will rent, buy, lease, or borrow VERI tokens from Veritaseum, and set up a co-branded digital asset exchange which will trade in major digital currencies.

Middleton is sincerely optimistic about Veritaseum and how it is poised given the exchange agreement, but also because of groundwork laid by his team. "We have multiple patents pending with very early priority dates back in early 2014," he said. "We have a product that was in the wild operating in beta since 2016 ... We have the best performing token in the history of the industry if you go by time period, and we have a top twenty performer regardless of time period."

Middleton spoke of a future development for Veritaseum – the establishment of a rental facility as a public beta in the next three weeks. He also said that a multi-trillion dollar partner who cannot be named may give Veritaseum the capability to compete directly with the Nasdaq exchange.

The conversation with Middleton came to a close on a thankful note. He expressed that Veritaseum and the blockchain community make a good team. "I'm very, very happy with the cohesiveness and the intelligence and resourcefulness of the community."