Uber, Hotwire Execs Invest $2.25 Million in ChangeTip Competitor NeuCoin

Micropayments startup NeuCoin has raised $2.25m in angel funding from over 20 individual of investors, including King co-founder Patrik Stymne, Uber SVP Emil Michael and Hotwire president Henrik Kjellberg.
The announcement coincides with the official launch of neucoin, a dedicated altcoin that aims to promote online tipping.
NeuCoin co-founder Dan Kaufman said the project would provide a similar service to that of prominent micropayments startup ChangeTip, in which he is an investor, while removing the need for consumers to use bitcoin.
Kaufman told CoinDesk:
‘Basically we think that digital currencies have not been adopted widely by consumers because they’re not easy to use … and they’re not providing a benefit or a use case that consumers care about.’
NeuCoin’s launch will coincide with the debut of a number of supporting resources for the project, including GetNeuCoin.com, a tutorial site for new users, and MyNeuCoin.com, the site’s online money management portal.
To start, 3bn neucoins will be pre-mined and distributed to three non-profit organizations controlled by neucoin holders – the Code, Utility and Growth foundations – which will seek to expand and promote the altcoin.
The initial fundraising will be allocated to covering operational costs at the foundations for the project’s first year.

This post was published at Coin Desk on February 3, 2015.