Thank you for your inquiries.
You are correct in that there exists no certifier's certifier for cryptocurrencies. This field is still new, so we must acknowledge that no higher authority certifies our services. However, we did submit to an identification process both with the State of Washington and with Comodo. Essentially they certify our identity. However, as you point out, no one certifies our technical knowledge with respect to cryptocurrencies. If you know of such a certifying authority, we would be grateful if you could point us to it.
We think that this fact is reflected in our pricing, which for the moment is only 0.4 BTC for a Deployment or Launch Certificate. These certifications are the highest levels we offer. A Deployment Certificate, for example, certifies that we have determined from legal documents supplied to us that a developer has the identity they claim. For this certificate, we also look at the source code for any potentially malicious behavior. We further inspect the code to ensure that its behavior complies with specifications provided to us by the developer. We also ensure that the specifications reported to us are faithfully reported at the bitcointalk announcement and coin website, if it exists. Finally, we build and test the code to make sure the behavior conforms to our expectations with respect to coin emssion. If the coin is an ICO, we monitor the behavior of the live block chain during the ICO as well. We sign these builds, which the developer may and should distribute. We only provide signed builds when the ICO is nearly complete, to give us the maximum amount of time to observe the behavior of the live block chain.
If a coin has a CryptoCertify Launch Certificate or Deployment Certificate, then the Windows and OS X builds will bear our cryptographic signature. This signature helps protect the user. If the user does not see evidence of the signature upon starting the program, the user should not use the build.
Finally, because cryptocurrencies are new, we hope to let the public be our certifiers in the absence of a centralized authority. We aim to build our reputation and brand by carefully inspecting the
coins and developers we certify. Again, we feel like this lack of a higher certifying authority is reflected in our pricing. But please feel free to link back to this post as proof that no higher certifying authority certifies our services. We fully acknowledge your concern and absolutely do not want to appear that we misrepresent this fact in any way.
