Exclusive: Trade.io CEO Talks Forbes Partnership, Mysterious Wallet Hack

Swiss blockchain company Trade.io has collaborated with Forbes Media and a NY private investment firm to launch a new data-driven portal that offers comprehensive tracking of cryptocurrencies.
The new portal, called ‘,’ will provide real-time pricing and volume information of thousands of cryptocurrencies, tokens, blockchain projects, as well as new benchmarks.

is emerging with this high-profile partnership, but the Switzerland-based startups is still licking its wounds after it has suffered a rare attack that affected its cold wallets. Only 24 hours before the publication went live, the incident has resulted in the loss of around 50 Million TIO tokens, worth nearly $7.5 million.
Trade.io management said on Monday it is considering a to generate a similar ERC-20 token under the ticker TIOx. Details of the fork, which mainly aims to render the stolen tokens useless, are expected to be released soon.
In a short interview, trade.io CEO Jim Preissler told Finance Magnates that he firmly believes Forbes CryptoMarkets will become the primary place for all things crypto including market/token analysis, latest blockchain news, and a place for crypto companies to be seen and heard.

Jim Preissler, CEO at trade.io
Source: LinkedIn
Mr. Preissler also clarified that the new initiative is an equity partnership where the company holds a financial stake in ‘the success of Forbes CryptoMarkets.’ He added that a portion of the revenue trade.io earns as a result of the deal will go towards its liquidity pool.
Trade.io CEO also provided a fresh heads-up about the security breach.
Firstly, we asked him how the company puts this high-level partnership in context after the theft of $7.5 million in TIO tokens?
Mr. Preissler answered: To set the record straight, the $7.5M figure that has been reported is completely inaccurate.  50M TIO that belonged to the company were taken from a wallet in cold storage.  Due to the quick action of our security team, of those 50M TIO, only 1M +/- were sold on the open market.  Based on the average price of approximately $.23 per TIO, that’s roughly $230,000.  The remaining 49M +/- TIO have been accounted for and were not sold in the open market.  Additionally, our security team feels strongly they will be able to recover even the proceeds of the 1M TIO, so as a result, again, the total monetary loss will be at worst approximately $230,000.
With regards to the partnership, we feel it speaks volumes about trade.io’s status and position in the crypto space.  While still a very young company, we were able to catch the eye of a Fortune 500 company, no doubt due to our reputation and the experience of our management team.
Did you have any issues with Forbes given the hack happened less than 24 hours before the publication went live?
With crypto, even using best practices, there can be challenges.  It’s about how the team and partners responded to quickly take action and protect the community and minimize the risk.

The latest on the unauthorized access of the third-party wallet, correcting some of the misinformation that’s out there. To reiterate, client funds, client accounts, exchange, LP, and TIO holders are all safe. Read more for the latest:

— trade.io (@TradeToken)

Given the decentralized nature of blockchain, unfortunately breaches have happened to even the largest, most well capitalized companies.  As a company you simply have to do your best to learn from any mistakes that may have occurred, make sure your clients are taken care of, and move on.  One thing is for sure, an incident like this certainly doesn’t define trade.io and doesn’t diminish all the positive attributes that were seen in our company when deciding to make trade.io part of Forbes CryptoMarkets.
Could you please provide us with latest updates about your findings? Did investigations reveal any suspicious activity that took place inside?
While we can’t reveal too much due to the fact it’s an ongoing investigation, as stated earlier, we were fortunate to have necessary protocols in place to prevent the issue from becoming much worse from a monetary standpoint.  There is no reason to believe at this point it was an internal breach, and indications are the bad actor was an external party.  What I can tell you is that, we’re very happy to have had the support of many parties in the industry, and it’s a true testament of the comraderie of companies in the blockchain space.

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