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 software and peer-to-peer network for the exchange of digital currencies. In early 2014, Pecunix announced they would be replacing their Pecunix Payments system with the open source Voucher-Safe system and PX-Gold. By the end of 2014, all legitimate digital currency exchangers had ceased dealing with Pecunix. In early 2015, Pecunix disabled the log-in feature of their website, thereby preventing all users from accessing their accounts. A statement on the Pecunix website claimed that this was a temporary change "due to new management and restructuring", but access was never restored. The P2P Voucher Payment System became fully operational in August 2015,