MoneyButton to shut down by June 26, tells users to move funds

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Popular BSV blockchain wallet application MoneyButton announced it would shut down starting June 2023, advising all users to remove assets from their wallets as soon as possible. 

Here’s some information on dates, where users can move their funds and how this affects other BSV services.

Users should take action before June 26 and September 29, 2023.

Failure to log in to their MoneyButton account before June 26, 2023, will still be able to access BSV funds and associated tokens by downloading their wallet mnemonics (aka seed phrases) and recovering them on alternate platforms. However, anyone who has not moved assets or noted down their mnemonics by September 29, 2023 will lose access for good.

In a post announcing the closure, MoneyButton recommended RockWallet, ElectrumSV, and HandCash as compatible alternatives. The team also advised users to contact those wallet providers for guidance on importing mnemonics and moving assets over, saying, “Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to provide any support for this process.”

“Thank you for all your support over the years; we appreciate all of you and can’t wait to show you the next iteration of MoneyButton. We know the best is yet to come,” the team wrote.

Money Button and Fabriik spun out and went with the company’s former CEO who has decided to close the wallet to focus on gaming. The recent post about the wallet closure ended with a teaser preview hinting MoneyButton would pivot into a portal for gamers, storing and trading in-game items and game information.

Other services affected

MoneyButton’s shutdown left more than a few users surprised, as indicated by the following tweet. Additionally, the project’s official Twitter profile has not posted since October 2022.

https://twitter.com/zo_dazo/status/1667572534026412034

MoneyButton, which changed its Twitter name to MoneyButtonMBX, posted an optimistic-sounding announcement on October 18, 2022, saying it was “doubling down on MoneyButton.” However, the account went silent before the end of that month, and the mbx.moneybutton.com page appears to be inactive.

MoneyButton had its own proprietary token protocol for BSV sub-assets, known as Simple Fabriik Protocol (SFP). Launched in early 2021, SFP was one of many token protocols developed for BSV. While it was never one of the best-known or most popular platforms to launch a new asset, there were a few notable experiments within the BSV enthusiast community, such as Joshua Henslee’s ShuaCoin and GorillaDAO’s APE token. SHUA also exists on other BSV-based protocols. Other assets were distributed to MoneyButton wallet users as “airdrops.”

I want to clarify the $SHUA situation in a thread. I know it is confusing and my apologies, but by this you can tell this wasn't pre-planned.

Last month, I issued and sold 100 $SHUA via the MoneyButton Simple Fabriik Protocol.

These sold out in hours and started trading p2p.

— shua (@cryptoAcorns) March 12, 2021

GorillaDAO is a DAO structure started by Patrick Thompson. Though it began with genuine and earnest enthusiasm, it eventually suffered from a lack of clear purpose and disagreements among its members over what that purpose should be. Thompson announced he wished to hand over the reins to a successor in mid-2022, and the community chat forum has been fairly quiet since then.

However, GorillaDAO’s main voting-rights asset, the APE token, still exists as an SFP asset on MoneyButton. Thompson posted on Twitter some advice on what APE holders should do:

The @DaoGorilla token distribution system (GDTDS) was built on @money_button which is being shut down on June 26.

All Apes should use the GDTDS BEFORE June 20th, 12:00 UTC to guarantee they are able to convert back to BSV without any obstacleshttps://t.co/A9Fxfr8gs1 pic.twitter.com/eSTOCdLeyS

— Patrick Thompson (@PThompson_) June 10, 2023

At the time of writing, MoneyButton’s developer documentation pages were offline. There have been grumbles in the past over different BSV wallets supporting different token protocols, and the sudden shutdown of MoneyButton is probably a real-life example of the risks this practice poses. Likewise, the relative inactivity of SFP and MoneyButton-based projects over the past year hints at a reason for the closure.

Other wallet services took the opportunity to sign up any users looking for a new home.

If you are looking to move your Bitcoin off of MoneyButton, we think you should give Tokenized a try.

It's a desktop app that uses a self-custody security model – with iCloud/GDrive and seed phrase backups – that uses your phone to store and manage your private keys.

We also… pic.twitter.com/E055CHkVY4

— James | Tokenized.com (@JamesBelding) June 10, 2023

So far, there have been no explicit announcements from other wallet platforms that they would support SFP, so anyone holding SFP tokens in valuable amounts should check posts from their issuer or ask directly, or trade the assets back to BSV on available platforms.

The history of MoneyButton

MoneyButton, launched in 2018 by Ryan X. Charles as a BCH project, was once one of the most popular BSV wallets. It featured a novel “swipe-to-pay” slider that web developers could include on e-commerce sites, essentially providing BSV users with an Amazon-style one-click payment button, provided they were signed in to a funded Bitcoin wallet.

In 2019, it was also the first wallet to implement Paymail addresses, meaning users could send and receive bitcoins using a convenient email-style address instead of copying/pasting an address hash string or scanning a QR code. 

Over time, however, its features were matched and superseded by other wallets with more popular features, primarily HandCash (which also began life as a BCH project and co-developed the Paymail protocols). The lack of a MoneyButton mobile app likely stunted its userbase growth as mobile apps like HandCash introduced slick interface upgrades and external app links, and RelayX became a favorite for NFT traders.

MoneyButton acknowledged this evolution in BSV service in its post, saying, “after reviewing the functionality, technology, and profitability of MoneyButton, we recognize that our peers have created phenomenal products in the wallet and payments space.”

In September 2020, MoneyButton was acquired by The Bayesian Group’s new blockchain project Fabriik, which launched its native Simple Fabriik Protocol (SFP) for asset tokens. Despite the acquisition, MoneyButton retained an independent design and never featured any Fabriik branding.

Fabriik’s own website is also currently down, and there have been no announcements from the team there. CoinGeek continues to investigate the situation and will update this article if any new information emerges.

Watch: Wallets and overlay services on the Bitcoin network