Bitcoin Marketplace Buttercoin Folds Despite $1.3 Million Investment

[tokeweed]

Another one bites the dust.

US bitcoin marketplace Buttercoin is shutting its doors, despite launching just four months ago with at least $1.3m in investor backing.

In a farewell post to customers today, the Buttercoin team announced the service will go offline this Friday (April 10th) at 11pm PST.

Stressing that it was "100% secure and solvent", the Palo Alto-based platform blamed a lack of VC interest for its closure, stating:

"With the dip in bitcoin interest among Silicon Valley investors, we weren't able to generate enough venture capital interest to continue funding Buttercoin."

Buttercoin's nine-person team had raised at least $1.3m from investors including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Y Combinator, Centralway Ventures, Google Ventures and Wedbush Securities – though its exact funding total is unclear.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-marketplace-buttercoin-folds-despite-1-3-million-investment/

[Kazimir]

How the fuck can you not run a company beyond four months with $1.3 million.

Seriously, what is it with these people.

[bryant.coleman]

How the fuck can you not run a company beyond four months with $1.3 million.

Seriously, what is it with these people.

That is because 99% of the bitcoin-based ventures are run either by conmen, or people who are extremely incompetent. Anyway... even more negativity for BTC. 

[tokeweed]

How the fuck can you not run a company beyond four months with $1.3 million.

Seriously, what is it with these people.

[Q7]

That will only further erode people's confidence that they have in bitcoin. With that size of funding, I don't know how it can ended up becoming a failed business model but obviously there must be something happening within that we did not see.

[SebastianJu]

Would be interesting to know what amount of money they still have in order to pay it back to their investors. I guess it would be hard to explain if much is gone.

But i like the news so far because it seems to be the first exchange or eve bitcoin venture that went wrong and actually can refund the investors, hopefully for the biggest part.

[gentlemand]

That will only further erode people's confidence that they have in bitcoin. With that size of funding, I don't know how it can ended up becoming a failed business model but obviously there must be something happening within that we did not see.

1.3 million is comparative peanuts in the VC world. You can burn through that in a few days spending on offices, branding, schmoozing.

Businesses fail constantly everywhere because they're not attractive to customers. At least it didn't steal anything from anyone. If they wanted to survive they should've been as appealing as existing options. For whatever reasons, they're not.

Bitcoiners feel a little bit like arsehole yuppy parents sometimes, screeching when their special snowflake acquires a chipped fingernail. I don't scrap my car when the nearest fuel station closes down.

[tokeweed]

That will only further erode people's confidence that they have in bitcoin. With that size of funding, I don't know how it can ended up becoming a failed business model but obviously there must be something happening within that we did not see.

1.3 million is comparative peanuts in the VC world. You can burn through that in a few days spending on offices, branding, schmoozing.

Businesses fail constantly everywhere because they're not attractive to customers. At least it didn't steal anything from anyone. If they wanted to survive they should've been as appealing as existing options. For whatever reasons, they're not.

Bitcoiners feel a little bit like arsehole yuppy parents sometimes, screeching when their special snowflake acquires a chipped fingernail. I don't scrap my car when the nearest fuel station closes down.

If they burned 1.3m in a matter of days.  Then that start up was the wrong one to invest in.

[gentlemand]

If they burned 1.3m in a matter of days.  Then that start up was the wrong one to invest in.

I'm sure they were more diligent than that, but it's small fry for VC spending. Quite often hundreds of millions disappear down black holes that never made a penny back.

[umairsaleem]

Another one bites the dust.

US bitcoin marketplace Buttercoin is shutting its doors, despite launching just four months ago with at least $1.3m in investor backing.

In a farewell post to customers today, the Buttercoin team announced the service will go offline this Friday (April 10th) at 11pm PST.

Stressing that it was "100% secure and solvent", the Palo Alto-based platform blamed a lack of VC interest for its closure, stating:

"With the dip in bitcoin interest among Silicon Valley investors, we weren't able to generate enough venture capital interest to continue funding Buttercoin."

Buttercoin's nine-person team had raised at least $1.3m from investors including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Y Combinator, Centralway Ventures, Google Ventures and Wedbush Securities – though its exact funding total is unclear.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-marketplace-buttercoin-folds-despite-1-3-million-investment/

SiliconVstreet is losing interest in Bitcoin, investors are losing interest, this is the harsh reality we have to face, espacially the ones who always say wall street big money all the day,  the situation is not so optimistic.

[bryant.coleman]

SiliconVstreet is losing interest in Bitcoin, investors are losing interest, this is the harsh reality we have to face, espacially the ones who always say wall street big money all the day,  the situation is not so optimistic.

Investors need to accept the reality. After setbacks such as Mt Gox and Sheep Market Place, it is clear that Bitcoin might take at least a few years time to recover. As far as I know, these investors are looking for quick returns, which is not going to happen with Bitcoin in near future.

[GTO911]

Maybe it was the name. Buttercoin??

Maybe buttcoin was better?

[sangaman]

It's a shame, I used this exchange a bit and really liked the interface and some of their blog posts, but they never really seemed to attract much volume. I'd speculate they were partly overshadowed by other new US exchanges like Coinbase.

[IlaughAtU]

That should have been enough to get it off the ground.

If not their business model or their business plan, or both, were unsound.

Better now than later when they would have taken a bunch of people with them.

[calaber24p]

I hope that their balance sheets show some sort of justified use of the funds or else those involved will never get another VC investment. People make this mistake all the time, woo 1.3 million in funding lets all pay ourselves 300k a year and then they go bankrupt. They start another company and no VC firm wants to go anywhere near them. Getting funding doesn't mean you can stop being frugal.

[bryant.coleman]

It's a shame, I used this exchange a bit and really liked the interface and some of their blog posts, but they never really seemed to attract much volume. I'd speculate they were partly overshadowed by other new US exchanges like Coinbase.

Agreed. But I never saw any promotions by them to attract new users. Even here in Bitcointalk, I hardly ever say any of their offers or discounts. Accept the truth. These guys were not interested in running the site. Their intentions were something else.

[¡ndustrialcoinmagic]

It's a shame, I used this exchange a bit and really liked the interface and some of their blog posts, but they never really seemed to attract much volume. I'd speculate they were partly overshadowed by other new US exchanges like Coinbase.

Agreed. But I never saw any promotions by them to attract new users. Even here in Bitcointalk, I hardly ever say any of their offers or discounts. Accept the truth. These guys were not interested in running the site. Their intentions were something else.

some are just investment to cover some other purposes .

[bryant.coleman]

some are just investment to cover some other purposes .

Remember the dot-com bubble of 1999-2000? A group of cons would suddenly put up a tech company, claiming that it will be having billions of USD in profits within a few weeks.  Unsuspecting (and greedy) investors would flock together to buy stocks and the promoters will vanish once they have sold a majority of their shares. Many of the Bitcoin based ventures are similar.

[crazyivan]

Well 1.3 mill VC can cover your operational costs but it does not guarantee that the you ll successfully cope with the competitions. IMHO, they are just using the lack of VC as a cover up story for them not being able to survive in the market. After all, it is very competitive market.

[Bitcoinpro]

buttercoin is this story by any chance from the 1st of April