Buttercoin has announced it will be closing on April the 10th. 2015 is getting to be a hard year for bitcoin exchanges; many digital currency exchanges have been facing serious difficulties and a lot of them have been forced to close their doors. The latest exchange to go down is the US based exchange, Buttercoin.
We can find the following announcement on their website:
“So long friends. Buttercoin will be turning off April 10th at 11PM PDT. Be sure to move your bitcoins to another service and remove your dollar balances. We wish you all the best!”
Buttercoin launched in 2013 and received funding from startup incubator Y Combinator as well as venture capital fund Google Ventures. In November 2014, the California based exchange also raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Wall Street firm Wedbush Securities. It launched with the goal of targeting the remittances economy, hoping to compete with more popular money transfer services like Western Union with cheaper and more streamlined transactions facilitated by digital currency. The shutdown comes amidst the company raising $1.6 million in funding from Google Ventures.
The Reason – Lack of Funding
Contrary to what has been happening to other digital currency exchanges which have closed down due to scams or heists, Buttercoin claims to be closing down its services due to lack of funding. The exchange states that its fate is much in part caused by the dip in Bitcoin interest among Silicon Valley investors. However, recent reports say otherwise; several major companies have invested in, or have shown interest in investing in Bitcoin in recent months.
Buttercoin will close its doors at 11 PM Pacific time on April 10th. The exchange already contacted all its customers via email informing that any funds not withdrawn from the site at that time will be automatically converted into dollars and sent to the users’ accounts bank accounts.
