Months after its core development team was acqui-hired by accommodations startup Airbnb, bitcoin tipping service ChangeTip is closing its doors.
Nick Sullivan took to Reddit today to announce the closure. He said that the tipping service will be officially turned off at the end of November, though its website will remain open “for a number of months” in order to allow for user withdrawals.
The closure comes less than two years after the startup, once a popular tool for sending bitcoin tips via social media, raised $3.5m in a seed funding round. ChangeTip sought to bring bitcoin tipping to popular Web platforms like Twitch and Facebook.
ChangeTip had attempted to sell the remaining assets and code tied to its tipping service but struggled to do so in the months following Airbnb’s acqui-hire. Those hires took place in April.
In today’s post, Sullivan confirmed the struggles to find a future for the service, adding that the cost of continued operation played a role in the decision.
Sullivan wrote:
“In the spring of 2016, ChangeTip’s employees were acqui-hired by Airbnb, where most of us work today. Since then, we’ve been searching for the best outcome for ChangeTip, and unfortunately the only remaining option is to shut it down.”
Sullivan said that withdrawals would be processed every 24 hours or so, before going on to the service’s users for their commitment over the years.
“It was a great adventure, and we’re proud of what we built – we sincerely hope you enjoyed using ChangeTip,” he wrote.
Disclaimer: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in ChangeTip.
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