It has emerged that a software bug was at fault for accidently losing $300 million in cryptocurrency. This follows a previous bug that led to the theft of $32m in July. Ethereum, arguably the second most important cryptocurrency, after Bitcoin, is currently looking in to ways of rectifying the situation, but should have it been allowed to happen in the first place?
Richard Lowe, Head of UK BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) at SQS, believes that for cryptocurrency to be more widely accepted by the public, providers must earn their trust by doing everything in their power to avoid software bugs. Issues such as this have the potential to give the whole cryptocurrency sector a label of unreliability and unnecessary risk. Even traditional banks face the distinct possibility of loyal customers leaving them due to just one tech foul-up, according to the latest research from SQS. The below comment suggests that if cryptocurrency is to earn the trust of the public, providers must embed quality in to every aspect of the customer experience to avoid reputation damaging events like this.
Richard Lowe, Head of UK BFSI at SQS:
“The fact that $300m in cryptocurrency can just disappear proves how catastrophic a software bug can be to an organisation. Software failures can lead to major financial, reputational and operational repercussions. While this seems to be an isolated incident, software failures can impact an entire country’s economy. As such, the financial sector is particularly reliant on cutting edge technology to input algorithms that control the financial market, and therefore can be particularly vulnerable to system failures. In fact, traditional banks continue to be placed under scrutiny after facing regulatory fines for IT failures delaying customers receiving their pay cheques, direct debits going ‘missing’ and outages caused by high volumes of network traffic.
Recent research from SQS, the leading end-to-end quality specialist, shows that UK consumers give a high amount of trust to their banking provider with 85 per cent of customers saying that they trust them to manage their money effectively, but just one tech foul-up could see customers switch allegiances to a competitor. Traditional banks have earnt the trust of customers over many years, cryptocurrency providers, however, have not yet built up this level of trust and a software issue that could potentially cost customers millions, may prove disastrous. The finance sector, including cryptocurrency providers, implicitly operates on trust and must do everything in its power to earn customer confidence by living up to their high expectations. If cryptocurrency is to become mainstream, providers must earn the trust of customers by embedding quality assurance into every part of the customer experience.”
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