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,
Currency War of 2009–11 the currency war had ended – governments of emerging economies were increasingly deciding to accept currency appreciation so as to mitigate rising food prices, one of the causes behind civil discontent driving the Arab Spring. In April, the "Financial Times" joined Bloomberg in reporting that the currency war was beginning to fizzle out, again suggesting a key reason was the trend for emerging economies to allow currency appreciation as a means to offset inflation. Although Brazil is one of the emerging countries that has recently abandoned intervening against appreciation, her finance minister Guido Mantega disagreed with suggestions that the 'currency