Digital currency founded DigiCash, an electronic cash company, in Amsterdam to commercialize the ideas in his research. It filed for bankruptcy in 1998. In 1999, Chaum left the company. In 1997, Coca-Cola offered buying from vending machines using mobile payments. After that PayPal emerged in 1998. Other systems followed suit, such as e-gold, but it faced issues because it was used by criminals and was closed by U.S Department of Justice in 2005. In 2008, bitcoin was introduced, which marked the start of digital currencies. Origins of digital currencies date back to the 1990s Dot-com bubble. One of the first was E-gold,
Digital gold currency e-gold complied with all other terms of its plea agreement, it was not able to obtain money transmitting licenses due to its guilty plea. Since returning value to customers could constitute money transmitting without a license, e-gold entered into an agreement in 2010 with the US Government to enable e-gold account holders to claim the "monetized value" of their accounts, collectively valued in excess of 90 million US Dollars. 1mdc was a digital gold currency backed by e-gold rather than by physical gold. In April 27, 2007, a US court ordered e-gold to freeze or block the e-gold accounts 1mdc