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A Newcastle fintech firm that raised $2m of investment has decided to shut down.

Bottle Pay had recently been making waves in the cyrptocurrency world by offering its users a way of paying for goods with Bitcoin using their social media accounts.

But the company has now announced that it plans to close down at the end of the month after it was announced that new EU laws are coming into force that will clamp down on how cryptocurrencies are used.

The 5AMLD EU regulation comes into force on January 10, 2020, and means that cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency exchanges will be held to the same anti-money laundering requirements as traditional financial institutions. This includes carrying out due diligence on customers and reporting suspicious information. It also requires exchanges and e-wallets to be registered with organisations such as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.

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Bottle Pay would be forced to abide by these new laws and increase the amount of information it collects from its customers. Rather than do this the company has decided to close.

In a statement Bottle Pay said: “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.”

Bottle Pay will shut down on December 31 at 1pm.

New customers are unable to join the site and deposits cannot be made. The company has also taken its bots off Twitter, Reddit, Telegram, and Discord.

Funds that are not withdrawn from Bottle Pay before the shut down will be donated to The Human Rights Foundation.

The Newcastle firm is run by Pete Cheyne and Peter O’Donoghue and earlier this managed to raise $2m (£1.64m) from private UK investors to grow the company. The firm immediately used the funds to increase its headcount from five to eight and was in the process of trying to grow its user base.

It is unknown whether the founders of the company will try and launch a new product to replace Bottle Pay.

The company added: “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.”