Airbnb has “acqui-hired” the majority of the team behind ChangeCoin, the blockchain company that developed the social Bitcoin tipping service ChangeTip, Quartz reported last week, citing “four people with knowledge of the deal” as sources.
“Acqui-hired” refers to hiring the key staff of a company in block, as opposed to purchasing the company and its intellectual property.
ChangeTip , the flagship service developed by the ChangeCoin team, offers a fast and simple way to show appreciation with a Bitcoin micropayment via the main social networks. ChangeTip went viral soon after launch and was considered a Bitcoin killer app, which allowed the company to raise $3.5 million in venture capital in 2014. However, the company continued to struggle and, according to the sources mentioned by Quartz, had to put its intellectual property and software up for sale.
"We are thrilled to bring some members of the ChangeTip team on as a part of Airbnb and joining the engineering team working on building our infrastructure,” an Airbnb spokesperson told International Business Times . "We are not acquiring the assets of the company, nor do we have any plans to incorporate Bitcoin into the Airbnb ecosystem."
Airbnb, founded in August 2008 and headquartered in San Francisco, is a peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace for temporary lodging that connects hosts and customers all over the world. The service is especially popular with cost-conscious tourists or visitors who need accommodation for a brief stay. In 2015, Airbnb raised $1.5 billion in funding led by growth equity firm General Atlantic. Airbnb’s business model, based on collecting fees from hosts, is similar to Uber’s.
The “people as a service” business model of Uber and Airbnb has proved disruptive and spectacularly successful with providers and consumers alike, and threatened established service providers such as hotels and taxi companies. Despite the many regulatory attacks […]
