37Coins
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
37Coins connected mobile networks to a Bitcoin wallet so users could send and receive Bitcoin through SMS gateways.
02 / 37Coins FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
In its own shutdown announcement, 37coins gave three reasons for closing: it was unable to deliver a quality product that demonstrated product-market fit; SMS delivery between different carriers in countries outside the United States proved unreliable, undermining its core cross-border model; and its initial objective could not be achieved with the amount of capital raised. The market had also matured around it, with competitors such as Coins.ph, ChangeTip, and the BitGive Foundation serving the same unbanked and underbanked populations.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Johann Barbie, Songyi Lee, and Jonathan Zobro found 37coins in Sunnyvale, California, building an SMS-based bitcoin wallet aimed at the unbanked and underbanked; the startup joins Plug and Play's bitcoin accelerator and builds partnerships in Singapore and the Philippines.
- Shutdown announced
In August 2015 the company announces it is shutting down its service and SMS wallet, citing lack of product-market fit, unreliable cross-border SMS delivery, and insufficient capital; users are given until December 30, 2015 to withdraw remaining balances.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
37coins raised $525,000 across two rounds from four investors.
- 02
In August 2015 the company announced it was shutting down its service and SMS wallet, stating its objectives could not be achieved with the capital raised.
- 03
Users were given until December 30, 2015 to withdraw remaining balances; no bankruptcy filing or asset sale was documented.