Cedric Dahl's (archive) Buttercoin has announced its intention to close as of the 10th of April due to an inability to secure additional VC funding. A notification on the Buttercoin website reads:
It's time to say goodbye
Farewell friends.
Buttercoin will be turning off our service on April 10th at 11PM Pacific.
Be sure to move your bitcoins to another service and remove your dollar balances by Friday April 10th at 11PM.
For reference…
Dollar balances not removed will be sent back to the accounts they came from.
Bitcoin balances in Buttercoin after April 10th will be converted to USD and sent to the bank linked to your account.It’s been a wonderful ride and we're delighted to have created a service so many people enjoy. With the dip in bitcoin interest among Silicon Valley investors, we weren't able to generate enough venture capital interest to continue funding Buttercoin.
We remain 100% secure & solvent with all customer funds accounted for.
We started Buttercoin with the goal of creating secure and scalable bitcoin infrastructure the community could rely on. We commited to building a service with excellent Security, Technology, Liquidity and Compliance. We're proud to have delivered on our goal and commitments.
We wish you all the best and will be around personally if you have questions or just want to talk bitcoin. You can reach us via hello@buttercoin.com. Our staff has always been humble, but are among the most talented in their fields and we're excited to see them go on and be leaders in their industries.
– Team Buttercoin
To date Buttercoin has raised upwards of USD $1.3 million in VC from investors such as Google Ventures and Y Combinator. In November 2014, Buttercoin received additional investment (archive) from Wedbush Securities and that investment coincided with the December launch of Buttercoin's US Bitcoin marketplace. Despite the "wonderful ride" which supposedly created a service many peopled enjoyed, the late Buttercoin rests now deceased because mission accomplished something or other.
Six employees, one of them a "compliance officer". Perhaps if they spent more time on excellent business models instead of "excellent compliance" they would have had a shot. If they were paying salaries equally, 16.6% was wasted on a job that didn't produce revenue.
This is the fate of all Bitcoin startups in the toxic USA melting pot of idiocy, paranoia, fanatical government worship and California Dreaming. Expect others to follow that operate from the same fetid nexus of stupid.