A Report on Digital Currencies

As the Bitcoin creating so much of buzz in the market it would be interesting to know the virtual currencies which hit the market and how they performed and their result in the long run

Beenz 1998-2001

Founded in 1998, in London by Charles Cohen, Beenz.com offered online currency which could be spending with participant merchant. One among the partners was Mastercard. Beenz.com raised 100 million from big companies like Oracle, Gucci, PPR and, Italian bank mogul Carlo De Benedetti. Purchasing of the currency was at local rate fixed by the company. The failure of Beenz started when people loosing confidence and miss selling. The company shut down all the operations in 2001.

Flooz

A year after the launch of Beenz.com, Flooz based in the New York went online for internet traders in the form of promotional bonus which can be used for merchandising purposes. The company had to shut down in 2001 based on the allegation by FBI that Russian stooges are misusing the credit card numbers for money laundering scheme. It’s an irony that Whoophie Goldberg, the comedy actor was the endorsing the brand!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Internetcash,

In 1999 itself Internercash started its operations but in 2001 it had to shut down its operations due to the failure of its business model. It was based on the prepaid concept, and the cards were sold in the denominations of $5, $10, $25, $50 and $100. They made good profit but they invested in building secure network, maintaining the architecture and card generation. Even though the company failed,their architecture was adopted by many companies including Visa and MasterCard.

E-Gold

This digital gold currency launched in 1996 and had millions of members but stopped its operations in 2001 however managed a re launch in 2001. The did a great deal of business in 2008 more than $2million worth of metal transaction in that year itself! The US based company's year to year turnover was more than 100%.

The company was based on a trust called "E-gold Special Purpose Trust which used to handle the physical metal for the members. The overwhelming success of this gold currency invited many hackers and phishing companies who also copied their business model including OSgold.com which operated with no gold! The site was used for many illegal activities and they had to shut down but they managed to re launch by 2011.

Digicash

The internet boom in 1990s witnessed another digital currency called Digicash, which was working on cryptographic codes assuring anonymity to the clients. During the partnership with banks they were restricted from keeping anonymity of the memebrs and thus went bankrupt in 1998.


CyberCash

This Virgina based company, went on with a $300 million IPO and went bankrupt in 2001 and they shut down their operations which they started in 1994. The company was bought by the predecessor of Paypal, Verisign.


Facebook Credits

Launched in 2009 and taken away in 2012. Working in the Facebook platform this currency was used to buy the FB apps and games. Available in 15 currency forms , they failed to create a currency for any other purpose than games. FB payments used to handle these transactions but they stopped operating in this currency and announced the transfer to the local currency.

Amazone Coins

The recent member in the virtual currency bandwagon, Amazone Coins was launched in May 2013 to purchase within Amazone.com.