ShapeShift Acquires Bitcoin Hardware Manufacturer KeepKey

In a rather surprising turn of events, hardware wallet manufacturer has been acquired. The company acquired a software wallet  a few years ago. Acquisitions are pretty common in the Bitcoin world these days. With Shapeshift now picking up the company, interesting things are bound to happen. The first priority is enabling real-time trading on KeepKey devices using the ShapeShift API. An interesting concept that makes hardware wallets even more convenient.

It doesn’t happen often we see a service provider buy a hardware-related company. Then again, ShapeShift has been making a lot of waves in recent months. The company provided instant cryptocurrency exchange services without requiring account registration. Acquiring KeepKey is not something most people would necessarily expect. Then again, it all appears to be part of the company’s expansion plan. Integrating all-time trading on Bitcoin hardware wallets will be an intriguing development, to say the least.

KeepKey Will Remain an Individual Brand

Cryptocurrency users often struggle to keep coins safe. Hardware wallets make a lot of sense in this regard. Unfortunately, most altcoins aren’t supported at this time. That will now come to change, assuming they will have a portion of Bitcoin in their KeepKey balance. The money can be exchanged to altcoins on demand. ShapeShift supports a few dozen different currencies, which opens up existing opportunities. A combination of hardware wallet and trustless exchange service will be quite spectacular.

It is worth mentioning the basics of this integration are already there. KeepKey integrated ShapeShift’s API not too long ago.  This means this process could be integrated  a lot sooner than people anticipate. KeepKey CTO Ken Hodler is quite excited about this acquisition. It will also guarantee the future of KeepKey as a company, in his opinion. This seems to indicate the company will keep working on its hardware wallet without any issues or hindrances.

So far, it appears the KeepKey brand will not go anywhere. That is positive news, as the brand is quite popular among cryptocurrency users. Additionally, this acquisition will provide additional capital for security expertise and further wallet development. It will be interesting to see if more cross-brand promotion between both companies occur in the future. A limited edition ShapeShift-themed KeepKey is not entirely out of the question at this stage.

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