Official announcement on the shutdown of Bottle Pay

Created on Friday 13th December 2019 16:00 GMT.

After having built a fantastic community around our service, and seeing huge growth in user numbers over the last few months, it is with heavy hearts that we announce Bottle Pay will cease operating on Tuesday 31st December 2019 at 13:00 GMT.

Why is this being done?

As we are a UK based custodial bitcoin wallet provider, we will have to comply with the 5AMLD EU regulation coming into effect on 10th January 2020.

The amount and type of extra personal information we would be required to collect from our users would alter the current user experience so radically, and so negatively, that we are not willing to force this onto our community.

Therefore to maintain our integrity as service providers, and to protect the interests of our team, investors and users, we have taken the painful decision to shut Bottle Pay down completely rather than become subject to these new regulations.

As we have never charged for our services, added routing fees or sold anything to our community, we feel confident we can close Bottle Pay with our heads held high, knowing that we always acted with the well being of our users foremost in our minds.

What happens next?

The shutdown of Bottle Pay will take the following form:

New sign ups and deposits to wallets go offline with immediate effect at the time of this announcement (16:00 GMT on Friday 13th December);

Our bots on Twitter, Reddit, Telegram and Discord have also been taken offline with immediate effect. Funds which have already been sent using them will not be claimed and will be returned to the sender as usual within 7 days.

Withdrawal function taken offline, and all wallets closed, at 13:00 GMT on Tuesday 31st December.

Funds remaining in wallets after shut down will be collected and donated to The Human Rights Foundation.

What should you do now?

Firstly, stay calm and be safe in the knowledge that all funds held in Bottle Pay wallets are available for withdrawal up to the final shut down time of 13:00 GMT on Tuesday 31st December 2019.

Please take the following steps to help us provide a rapid and hassle free experience for all users:

Remove any Payment Page links you may have created from your social profiles;

Uninstall the Bottle Pay browser extension if you are using it;

Withdraw all funds to another Lightning wallet. You can find instructions on how to do this here.

There is no need to manually unlink all of your connected social accounts or take any further action once the above steps have been taken.

At the time of shutdown all wallets will be taken offline and no personal information about you or your social accounts will be kept by us.

For technical support on withdrawals, please contact us on Telegram or via an email to support@bottle.li.

What does the future hold?

As we’re sure is clear, closing Bottle Pay is a very difficult decision for us as a team to take, but protecting the integrity of both ourselves and our community is our priority and has guided us to this course of action.

We will take some time now to gather our thoughts and decide on the best course of action going forward. If and when there are announcements to make on our future plans we will do so through reputable publications at the appropriate time.

In the meantime, we thank you in advance for your understanding, and apologise for any inconvenience caused by this decision.

Sincere thanks for accompanying us on this journey and for being part of the Bottle Pay story. We appreciate each one of you and wish you luck on whatever comes next for you.

Onwards and upwards.

The Bottle Pay team.