Beenz, the company attempting to build a purely online currency, has finally announced its own impending death. On 26 August it will be no more. Consumers will stop earning beenz and traders will stop redeeming them. It has passed on, it is no more, it has ceased to be, it's expired and gone to meet it's maker. This is an ex-beenz.

Course it denied it in May, but it couldn't really disguise the fact that everything in its offices was being sold off and staff didn't - how you say? - have a job.

Any has-beenz left in your account after midnight 26 August will be worth zilch, so you better get hunting for any suppliers daft enough to remain as beenz redeemers. Ten days and counting.

According to the release: "Beenz.com's decision to wind down the beenz economy and halt trading is a direct consequence of the company's successful strategy of minimising the company's liabilities whilst the company is involved in advanced negotiations with a number of interested parties regarding the potential sale of the business or its assets." Odd, because you don't often hear companies shutting up shop due to their success.

Anyway, the company is still trying to sell off its software and hardware - something it's been trying to do since May, but it's not really a seller's market out there at the moment. It reckons it can't tell us who's interested in buying the assets due to confidentiality contracts. Sounds like a load of beenz to us.

The London office is to shut down at the end of August (no surprise there) but New York will stay open to try to sell these darned assets.

At one point, Beenz was the darling of new media and epitomised the optimism of the Internet new world order where multi-billion pound corporates would be undermined by creative individuals and we would exist on talent and passion rather than power and control.

High on such talk, Charles Cohen - its founder and CEO - once said Beenz would become the universal currency, supplanting all others. That looks like a daft dream now. People, when working as a group, are simple, blinkered and terrified of change. And so the corporates have inevitably led the Internet and its hopes on a different, money-based tangent leaving the dreamers behind, a little richer and a little wiser.

With so much vested interest in keeping things the way they are, and enjoying the benefits of working different currencies, Beenz never really had a chance apart from as a novelty good. Its mistake was to want to be more than that.

So farewell Beenz
You tried your best
To sell the world your idea
But ideology is no good
When greedy bastards control EMEA
And the US
Too ®

Related Stories

Beenz denies it's about to be canned
Beenz meenz job cuts
Ellison spills over beenz