Andreas M Antonopoulos is probably one of the most well-known names in the Bitcoin community (A name search on YouTube for him will come up with 47,000 results). A Techno-Renaissance man with skills ranging from Information Security, cloud computing and data centers to Linux, open-source software and even robotics software development. He has also been a regular guest on Let’s Talk Bitcoin . Because of this history the announcement today that he was joining the Board at Blockchain will probably not come as much of a surprise.

Antonopoulos has been Chief Security Officer for Blockchain and apparently has done such a stellar job with both security and risk management that the company wants his input at the top of the chain. The blog stated about the decision:

“During his time as CSO, Andreas has provided expert guidance and a seasoned perspective on security, infrastructure, hiring, operations and public communications. Andreas’ keen insights, leadership and hands-on attitude have allowed Blockchain to improve risk management and security from infrastructure to operations.”

Blockchain had some problems earlier this year when they announced that they were temporarily suspending Shared Coin Transactions because of a set of “stuck” transactions. They released a report on the incident only two days later however on March 19, 2014 promising to have service totally restored within 72 hours, a promise that they kept. Antonopoulos has been with Blockchain and has been responsible for both security practices and risk management from the time this large company with a team of more than 20 was a one-man start-up. Blockchain now has more than 2 million registered wallet users.

The rapid growth of the company might be one reason for the promotion. With more than 2 million accounts the security operations is far more than one man can handle, even Andreas Antonopoulos. The job will now be handled by Blockchain’s founder and CTO Ben Reeves. The position has officially always been his but the creation of a security engineering team will require his full attention while Antonopoulos’ skills will be better used elsewhere in the company. The company, originally a simple data provision hub called blockchain.info, branched out and added the more consumer oriented site that brings together both its web and mobile wallets and just this June it added Bitcoin.com, another information portal but aimed at more basic information to people new to Bitcoin.

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