Bitcoin-based micropayments service ChangeTip has announced that it is going to discontinue its operations.



Founder Nick Sullivan made the announcement in a Reddit post. The closure comes months after the company was acqui-hired by online marketplace giant Airbnb.



“In the spring of 2016, ChangeTip’s employees were acqui-hired by Airbnb, where most of us work today. Since then, we’ve been searching for the best outcome for ChangeTip, and unfortunately the only remaining option is to shut it down”, Sullivan wrote. “At the end of November 2016, all tipping functionality will be deactivated, and the site will be put into withdrawal-only mode for people to collect their funds. The site will remain up for a number of months to allow users to withdraw their funds, and we will be reaching out to users to notify them”.



Started a little over 2 years ago, ChangeTip is the first product of ChangeCoin, which integrates payment processing with social media and makes it easy to send and receive money online. It allows users to send “bitcoin tips” over social media.



Sullivan said that since its inception, more 100,000 people have signed up for ChangeTip, and over 350,000 tips have been sent. The Bitcoin micro-transactions startup raised $3.5 million in March last year in a funding round lead by Pantera Capital.



“We gave the Bitcoin movement a good boost, and we’re honored to have been the ‘first bitcoin wallet’ for so many people”, he said.



Sullivan also said that when the users log-in to their accounts, they will have the option of closing their account, adding that once they opt for it, ChangeTip will delete all the social data. With regards to financial data, he clarified:



“For financial data, we made it an intentional point to not store credit card, bank account, etc. data (anything that could be used for a transaction). This is industry standard best practice. The way it works is that the credit card/bank account information is sent to a 3rd party credit card processor, and they give us a token back. We then charge with this token, and it's good for a 1 time use. In short, we don't have your actual credit card data, we only have a token that references it, so there is nothing to delete.”