Bitcoin payments-processing startup Bitnet Technologies Ltd. is in the process of selling its intellectual-property assets to Rakuten Inc., according to a memo related to the deal seen by The Wall Street Journal. The potential deal hasn’t been completed.
John McDonnell, chief executive and co-founder of Bitnet, declined to comment. Rakuten representatives declined to comment.
Rakuten, a publicly traded Japanese e-commerce company, had earlier invested in San Francisco-based Bitnet, a startup that helps retailers accept digital currency bitcoin as payment. Some of Rakuten’s retail sites had also used Bitnet to handle bitcoin as payment.
Rakuten is considering using Bitnet’s assets to continue testing and developing blockchain, which is the record-keeping technology underpinning bitcoin payments, the memo said.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-rakuten-in-talks-to-buy-assets-of-bitcoin-startup-bitnet-1468615758
