Bitcoin Forum

Purse.io is shutting down. They haven't given a reason yet. This is bad for Bitcoin.

https://twitter.com/PurseIO/status/1250876045693157377
https://support.purse.io/en/articles/3851246-closing-down

Update: Well, the situation seems to have changed ... https://support.purse.io/en/articles/3851246-purse-is-saying-goodbye

Where did they make their actual money? I could never be bothered to figure out how they worked and it was never completely clear how/if it worked for non Americans.

The obvious one is no one spending with the price down. I wonder whether there was anything AML ish too.

My guess always was that they charged a small percentage to the person placing the order. Anyway, I'm not really surprised people stopped using it; even if you could buy things with a "discount", someone had to pay for that discount, and it was crazy that people buying had to pay up to 40% on market price, it made no sense.

The people paying for the discount were those who wanted rid of Amazon gift card balances. I seem to remember reading people get paid in them quite often. It seems like a painless way to get BTC if you don't have many or any other options. I guess the most obvious alternative is buying something on Amazon and selling it on Ebay but that could easily wind up losing you more.

But even if it was "just" to get rid of the cards, a 40% on market price.... it's a bit abusive to say the least; it's way easier to just sell the codes here on currency exchange, and even if you don't get a 100% value of the code, you won't be wasting that much. But it's a free market, so we can't really tell people what to do with their stuff

40% is pretty darned extreme. I hardly ever saw that big a discount. If you want to let go for that little then that was your choice but I for one would've been more than a little wary of buying one with that desperate a discount. No idea what the stats were for carded codes but they must've been horrific.

This is very sad to the bitcoin developers and bitcoin community at large. I just got learn about how important they in regard to funding of bitcoin development last month. According to an article that was shared by bitmex research last month, they have been one of the top known funders of the open source development of bitcoin

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/07/19/nUG8l.png
Source: https://blog.bitmex.com/who-funds-bitcoin-development/

Only did find out about their services late last year and knew about how they deal with amazon on accepting crypto in purchasing their giftcards.
So it fundamentally a way for amazon to accept cryptocurrenies as a start but now that is gone with this announcement.
Very bad for bitcoin in going mainstream with the powerhouse amazon being the leader in online purchases.

i've always assumed they act as a market maker, skimming profit off the discount/premium spread. meaning gift card sellers get a bit less BTC, and BTC sellers get a bit less gift card value.


any service shutting down---especially one that provides market liquidity---is bad for bitcoin. but it probably isn't a huge deal in this case. i don't think purse.io is particularly popular at this point, though i'd be interested to see some numbers.

i always avoided it like the plague because of the fraud risks.

Weird. I thought Purse.io was going well as a business and suddenly we get this. Would it be possible for Purse.io to shut down due to all those fraud going on in their platform? I could also see how money laundering could possibly take place on the platform too. Might be a bit too far-fetched, but probably pressure from the government or from Amazon itself? It's just a weird timing. It's not like bitcoin dropped to sub $3k levels while heavily lowering down usage.

It seemed such an obvious avenue for fraud that I assumed they had some sort of super robust system to kill it whenever it popped up.

The alternative of it being a total free for all seems too obvious so maybe that is what it was.

All we've got for now is this


From what I read in other communities, people are either saying it's because of legal trouble or amazon cutting down commissions. I'm guessing their reply pertains to that. But If they were pressured, there's a high chance they wouldn't say it on their blog post... we'll see once it's here


Also, this June 26 should not be final given how uncertain our current situation is (covid-19) with shipping delays going on.

The explanation doesn't really mean anything (as you'd expect from public relations talk). It's hard to know why they close down at this point, and probably not worth questioning further. Do we have alternatives for this? I never managed to use purse but will probably need something like them later this year if I upgrade my PC.


This is for ongoing withdrawals and orders only btw. As for registration, it is disabled on April 16th. Shop & Earn & open orders will be disabled too on the 23th. Just to make it clear for someone who doesn't have time to read the news.

Purse.io was already dying for 2 years since some countries were removed for whatever reasons. I'm not really sure if they removed some countries or the areas were dying in the offers but the only countries available were US, UK, Canada, and Japan while more were available before.
.
Added with the fact that it's easier to buy bitcoins with a credit card nowadays and the fact they never managed to protect buyers against fraudulent purchases done with stolen CCs and vouchers, here we go.

I used the website myself and got some nice 30% discount but oh well, RIP Purse now

I never used them largely because their attempts at servicing foreigners were half hearted and confusing. They did a fixed 5% discount from themselves I think. It was offered to me as a Brit but if I remember rightly it could only come from Amazon.com which isn't much use if it breaks or I need it within a couple of weeks.

Similarly there were very few offers from non Americans.

I think this is the main reason they shut down. Always seemed to me like it would be too easy for people with hacked giftcards or giftcards received through scamming to cash out using them.

Perhaps they got pressured by certain authorities about this very issue? My best guess.

They had 17 employees working in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the world. Combined with a crisis potentially much greater than the one in 2008 and Amazon slashing their affiliate commissions they must have not seen much hope and the numbers must not have been great before these two events. It's shame because it was the best place to buy at Amazon with a discount, all other places that I know of are shadier/have more scammers.

I don't think Amazon has ever seen more orders than as of right now though (by the looks of their hiring stats? https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazon-hiring-for-additional-75-000-jobs ?).

You'd think that would also correlate with an increase in Purse.io usage.

The BTC price is wobbly and the future is looking wobbly too. I wouldn't be going to town treating myself to Lego Death Stars either even if I was bored out of my mind. If things are looking dicey you'll probably be more conscious of selling it than spending it.

And their shares are at an ATH, 30% up in the last 30 days. Maybe their users are different than average Amazon users, maybe too large a part of their income was from the Amazon Associates affiliate program, maybe the most common sources of gift cards are drying, maybe they're anticipating drastically lower demand once people start running out of money / the financial crisis starts for real / etc. It'd interesting if they could share all the numbers if they're shutting down for good.

How big is the possibility that much of purse.io's volume is for money laundering through hacked or stolen gift cards? Their team might have discovered that their success is based on criminal activities.

They wouldn't have lasted this long (six years) if that had been the case. They were a legitimate company but they have faced many similar accusations from people unacquainted with their business model.

IMO, the pressure by governments has squeezed their business model, it is hard to survive nowadays. My another guess is: Big fish eats small fish, who knows? Yesterday the employee of the company announced this officially on Reddit:  

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/PurseIO/comments/g2l4hu/closing_down/

I don't know where you saw that or even how you came to that conclusion. It isn't 'hard to survive' like you say if your service is viable and relevant


Purse.io is was one of the big fishes


I don't know why you repost this, it was already shared in the original post, we already knew this announcement

it is, if your service is not profitable. i'm not sure exactly what kind of volume they were doing at the end, but given the overall path of affiliate commissions, i'm gonna speculate they weren't making enough to last as an SF-based company.


purse.io was a big name in 2014, not so much in 2020. i think they've been quietly dying out for years.

Another Bitcoin use case gone. If it wasn’t for suckers trying to get rich buying worthless altcoins, I am beginning to wonder if anyone would be using Bitcoin at all. The strange thing is that it’s like nobody seems to notice that Bitcoin use cases have been dying for 5 years now. I really hope I’m not the last one out the door when the inevitable happens.

I take the view that 'use cases' will be the last thing to be refined. We have to get through the speculative phase, then the store of value bit and then just maybe it'll be a currency once that's achieved. Finally the merchant stuff starts to kick in properly.

I certainly appreciate the ability to pay with it but I won't be at all surprised if many more options die off and don't come back until a long time later.

It's still being decided what it is. A small number are using it as a currency. Tales like this tell us not very many others feel the same way.

I was not saying they were working with criminals. I was speculating that much of their volume might be from stolen gift cards. This might have attracted the attention of the government.

@OgNasty. However, it can also be argued that buying worthless altcoins is also a bitcoin use case hehehe.

I wasn't suggesting that this is what you were saying. I'm saying they would have been swamped with requests, investigations and accusations from the authorities about fraud or money laundering going on through their platform if these criminal acts were truly frequently occurring. They weren't some darknet fly-by-night operation so I have a hard time imagining that more than a small fraction of the volume was connected to hacked/stolen or otherwise fraudulently acquire GCs. Even developing countries go after GC scammers.

E.g.:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/32-arrested-at-indian-call-centre-that-targeted-canadians-1.4690651
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-fraud-usa/callers-for-dollars-inside-indias-scam-call-centers-idUSKBN13O2XZ

That’s just not how things work. Innovators move on. We’ve been seeing it and I fear we aren’t turning the ship in the right direction so new innovators are likely to pursue alternatives.



My point was that is one of the only use cases left.

To be fair, some platforms die, and some platforms rise out of nowhere. Purse shutting down definitely isn't a good thing, but I don't think it's THAT big of a hit on one of Bitcoin's use cases. While not literally exactly the same with Purse(with slight overlaps), newer platforms like Fold[1] and Bitrefill[2] definitely have gained traction. Both even have lightning!

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[1] https://foldapp.com/
[2] https://bitrefill.com/

Roger Ver says he is working to keep Purse.io running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv6raXD3sXc&t=16s

@odolvlobo. What more can he do for Purse if the problem is financial? I reckon if the bitcoin economy, the largest in the cryptospace cannot support it, how can bitcoin cash save it?

Also, that video was a promotion for bitcoin cash if no one noticed heheheh.

Not bitcoin cash per se, but Roger might be able to save it. At least depending on how his finances are going, as Roger is known to be an angel investor. I really wouldn't be surprised if Roger straight off bought the Purse.io business.

If theres some mutual benefit between the two enterprises then it becomes more likely to be a viable deal not just talk, he wants the revenue so I could imagine thats maybe a thing.   Its not going to be as big as bitpay or whoever as its just one website but its a dam big website all over the world.   Depends if they can make it work it on the hitches and details that have halted the original idea.
   Companies have come back before, its part of the cycle to discontinue what doesnt work;  people say any failure is a negative for BTC but I dont think its a simple binary outcome.

@mk4. It appears that he might save purse.io and use it as one of his services to promote his bitcoin cash scam, however hehehe.

He'll need people to want BCH for their gift cards though. If he does go for it it'll be interesting to see the uptake. I really can't see him educating newcomers as to the difference so maybe it'll explode as they believe they're getting 'more' Bitcoin.

purse.io already supported BCH so there wouldn't need to be any real transition there. i don't think roger ver would be dumb enough to remove BTC from the site since it surely provides most of the liquidity. there is no doubt he will unsubtly use it to advertise BCH though. it will probably be the default currency.

he sounds pretty confident that purse.io will keep running.

That, however, does not have answer to the argument that if purse.io's problem was financial and bitcoin's economy cannot support it, how can bitcoin cash save it?

:D  :D I know there are many people who use purse.io's service and their closure will be a loss for your purchase. Admittedly, their profits in this business model depend on the source of the gift card they are using, so there are some allegations regarding them. I don't know if they have any legal issues, but I believe that is why they stopped providing this service.

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Well, by the way, it seems to be a great advantage for me to provide my check out service on this forum. At the moment, I can only supply those in the US (and a few popular countries, this can be considered). Anyone interested in my services, please visit my topic here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240689) for a discounted purchase  :D

Who says it has to follow the same business model? He might change it completely. What it does have is brand awareness and that's a big arse job to create from scratch. People know it as place to exchange gift cards for crypto. There's room for other options within that remit, let alone beyond it. 

This exactly. If ever Roger did purchase Purse, I wouldn't be surprised if he did something similar with the type of "marketing" he did with his bitcoin.com website. Something something "bitcoin core for slower transactions" and "bitcoin cash for faster transactions".

The evil gubbermint hasn't done a thing. Stop seeing conspiracies at every step, like it's impossible for a bitcoin business to go bankrupt without interference, if that would have been the case we would all be doing this.

Their problem was a simple one, costs vs dwindling business income and the culprit for this is not the government, it's the...guess who?
Bitcoiners! Bitcoin users that have stopped being users and switched to being holders. And holders don't spend BTC.
No matter how much I dislike it this is the trend now, real-life usage compared to people in for the trading and holding is going down, I hate it, I dislike it, but this is the truth and we have to face it.


I seriously think we're going in reverse right now and I would be happy to see it staying at the store of value step.

Staying? I think it's still many years away before it gets anywhere near that. The price might be dead for long stretches but that means the appetite for speculation has died, not that it's become a store of value.

If you suggested to the average person that it would be great idea to park that money they put aside for their life saving operation in BTC while it all gets lined up they'd rightly smack you in the mouth.

I know, but I was saying what would make me happy in my care bear utopia, not how it's going to end.
I would love to see options to pay in BTC directly everywhere, directly! , no bitpay no coinpayments no nothing, I would even compromise with half usage half holding but I know how it will end up, probably like gold, traded 1000x times compared to the number of RL purchases and usage limited to pawn shops.


Been there, done that, avoided the punch, failed to see the kick, not doing it again.  8)

Roger is already a major shareholder in Purse.io.

Well, the situation seems to have changed ... https://support.purse.io/en/articles/3851246-purse-is-saying-goodbye

I tried to use them earlier, for once their logo popped up.   Im not sure what went wrong exactly but it wasn't zero hassle that I need it to be, it just hung and span saying it was doing something.  Meanwhile I just wanted to pay so who knows what it was, convenience is one of the most important things for anything consumer orientated.
    I know of a dozen methods to save money and when I tell people they sigh and just say they dont want the hassle, such a pity because the savings possible via various methods are not small in sum total.    This is also part of capitalism imo, people dont value money highest they value their own time as most valuable, so any route has to be easy to use always I'm sure of this.


Never underestimate the stupidity of your enemy, it can catch you off guard :p    but I agree strong bias is most likely, maybe a danger fee or a delay in clearance for using BTC.

It appears that gentlemand might be correct. Their business model will change, however, the skeptical me thinks it will be used as a passive political attack tool for bitcoin cash, similar to what Bitpay has been doing.

In any case, this might be the reason Purse wanted to stop.



Amazon is planning to make dramatic cuts to commission rates for its affiliate marketing program, which allows media organizations, e-commerce companies, and small and independent businesses to receive a cut of revenue from a sale if a customer lands on the product page and purchases the item through a provided link.

Source https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/4/14/21221326/amazon-affiliate-marketing-links-commerce-commission-cuts

Now reports are coming out that Roger Ver is in talks with the purse team and i wont be surprised if they continue under a new team as there are several investors who are interested in taking over the company and now they might continue with the site rather than halting their functions.
If Roger Ver takes over the site then he will use it as a tool to promote his fork but i do not think he will remove BTCitcoin.

Here is the details :Roger Ver ‘In Talks’ with Purse.io for Acquisition (https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/roger-ver-in-talks-with-purse-io-for-acquisition/)

@eaLiTy. I speculate what Roger might do is put a hidden promotion for bitcoin cash similar to Bitpay. Let users choose payment option between BTC and BCH then show their increased high fees for BTC and a 0 fee for BCH.

Sad news, I actually only saw the email in my inbox on Wednesday (why did they send it out so late to me I wonder, because I'm not American?) so coming late to this and catching up with things.

So Purse is not dead, but will be changing? And if it's Roger Ver, is Purse going to piss us off the way Bitpay seems to? Problem is, we'll still end up using it, the way I'm forced to use Bitpay because it's the only option for food delivery where I am!

Oh, 100TB less crap uploaded to youtube each day and no more hundreds of useless reviews for each item?  ;D
Also the death of blogs and reviews website that just read the specs of the product?
No more pushing crappy products just to earn a few cents on sales?

Clapping for Amazon on this one.


Oh, this one is news for me!
How can you not afford to share deals?  ;D


The service was going to close because it wasn't profitable for them anymore, probably they were losing money big time.
Roger Ver can do only two things, burn money to keep it running like it is in order to gain promotion for his other ventures or find a way to drastically reduce costs, nothing dramatically will change, if their way of earning is flawed you simply won't be making money out of it.

Probably some from Column A and some from Column B.

They have an office in high-rent San Francisco, with 17 employees. They last raised seed money in 2016. They have probably never turned much profit, and have now burned through their venture capital.

If the company were stripped down to the bare bones -- and with the added value Roger Ver will get from promoting BCH or his other ventures -- perhaps an acquisition makes sense. I don't know anyone else besides Roger Ver who has the money and unique incentives to make it worth it. I don't personally see much of a future for Purse.io, but I'm no business guru.

Will purse.io transform into a scam political attack tool under Roger Ver's ownership or he should be cheered because he saved it?

I reckon this question might be on some bitcoiners' heads with no answer hehehe.

It can be that and still be useful to people. That's probably what he would be counting on. He probably has a giant chart in his bedsit with 'use' and 'propaganda' written on it and he adjusts the ratio depending on how he feels that day.

I didn't realise how extensive the Amazon referrals thing would be. We're going to see lots of services change because of it.

Reminds me of almost every other tech "unicorn" -- posting huge revenues every year, but not actually making profit, just so they can get on to bigger and bigger rounds of funding, from seed and Series A and whatever, all the way to IPO, looking at every point to sell for max profit. Or to just run everything into the ground while they sit on millions of salaries and bonuses.

He does have money to burn, gotta hand that to him.

Several years ago, several purse.io customers were arrested after using their service. Most likely they were dealing in larger amounts, and with the same counerparty over time.

A lot of startups and tech companies are located in San Francisco because that is where a lot of talent is.

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It looks like they are going to put themselves up for sale instead of simply ceasing operations.

Tech talent, or investors with a lot of money to bet on risky businesses? Their business doesn't scream 'cutting edge rocket science' from a tech perspective*, they could have probably saved a lot of money by having most of their team working remotely from cheaper place(s).

*maybe they managed to develop some ingenious anti-fraud system few could come up with, I don't know, I'm skeptical

Largely about maintaining an image I'll guess. All of these crypto companies secretly dream of being stumbled across by a Peter Thiel and being scooped up and they think SF is the place to be for it to happen. There's so much noise there you'd likely be better off in Idaho where a potato billionaire gets a boner for that thar tech stuff.

I'm not too concerned either way. If Bitcoin users find value in it, I'm glad to see them pull through in some form.

Purse.io simply isn't that relevant anymore. BitPay's attacks -- publicly pushing for contentious hard forks, charging "network fees" and inaccurate mining fees and blaming small blocks for it, misleading messaging about fees in the BitPay/Copay wallets -- were a lot more concerning. Purse.io is a small fry compared to them. I see Roger Ver retaining value for BCH users more so than attacking Bitcoin with this.

It wasn't already?

I've heard from multiple people that underwent some pretty awkward contact from law enforcement after using purse.io early on. By all appearance its primary use was creating plausibly deniable laundering for identity thieves into cryptocurrency.

There have been other services that bridge Bitcoin to gift cards-- even ones without a bunch of altcoin shilling. But what they don't have is astronomical discounts like 20%, presumably that's because they aren't being powered by stolen funds.

The staff there engaged in some pretty reprehensible attacks against me personally-- and as a result I will never associate with anyone that has anything to do with them.

But... it sounds like a perfect match for Ver's business ethics.

If people are interested in doing something real, I'm confident that they would be better off in many other places.  If, instead, they want to put on a show and cycle through failed startup after failed startup then would be hard to beat.  You can think of what these companies and, more importantly, their investors is doing is fuzz testing the market.  You take some random people, you take some random business, you filter out some of the obvious crap and you see if it goes somewhere.  If it does, you gas it up and ride it to where it takes you-- if it doesn't, you let it die and try something else. The winners win big enough that they pay for all the losers and then some.

I've met people who've worked full time out here for over 20 years and worked for a dozen companies (what?) and never worked for a company that ever successfully shipped any kind of product. It's crazy. I can't imagine what that does to people's self esteem-- though I guess many just develop a blindness to how absurd it is.

There are, of course, also good people-- just from weather and environmental conditions, northern California is a pretty great place to live and so if you could pick anywhere in the world to live this would rank highly (which is part of how they can get away with relatively high taxes! :)).  But hot shots here can make close to mid six figures working at Google. Most of the people your SF startup can easily hire ... aren't that.

It died a hero by accepting money from Roger Ver to save it and clearly use it as a passive political attack tool? I reckon that it might also be continued to be used as a money laundering tool as mentioned by gmaxwell.

It appears that I might be correct on this.