Not long ago, I told you about a major international terror attack carried out by the authorities of several countries against a small crypto exchange, Bitzlato. It seemed that everything in this story was already clear: the company was crushed, and the depositors’ money was lost.

However, the exchange team decided to preserve the service. Since the servers were seized and the bot’s code was compromised, they are currently rewriting the code; starting March 1, they promise to organize the possibility for every user to withdraw half of their deposit, and later gradually provide full access to the remaining funds.

I like the fighting spirit in the news published by the project team. No “bleh, meh, we are not to blame, force majeure, there’s nothing to be done, bye-bye.” Instead, the seize-ers are clearly called seize-ers, and they are almost openly sent away in the manner of the Russian warship—remember that ancient meme?

Yes, using centralized services is dangerous, but completely avoiding trust in certain intermediaries is a very costly endeavor. And that is why I especially value those centralized services that have, in one way or another, passed the “test of character.” Not every company can manage this. For instance, the Bitfinex exchange managed to reimburse depositors for losses from a major hack in its time, while the btc-e exchange could not survive a raid by bandits in uniform. I very much hope that the Bitzlato service will pass its test of character.